


Agathe, like Dukat: Caught

by BrokenBlade



Series: Agathe, like Dukat [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: A world without SEX with Gul Dukat is no kind of world at all, Angst, F/M, Gul Dukat is a Fucking God, Mildly Dubious Consent, damn I wish I was your lover, give me an hour to kiss you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26581648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenBlade/pseuds/BrokenBlade
Summary: In these dark uncertain times,It becomes more essential than everTo focus our minds on beauty and peaceLike being naked and softAll over Gul Dukat's bodyUnarmored and strippedAnd fucking loving himSo good and so hardThis is a riff on 'Civil Defense'.What did Dukat DO after the power surge?It's got a touch of rapey/non-con...though some say that's debatable. Dub-con, maybe?
Relationships: Dukat (Star Trek) & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Agathe, like Dukat [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946584
Comments: 50
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShevatheGun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShevatheGun/gifts).



> Yes, I _know_ 'Civil Defense' has been done.
> 
> But has Gul Dukat been 'done'? Enough? Oh no, no. No, he hasn't.  
> And it is our duty to _do him, and do him,_ and do him some more.
> 
> In the author's defense, how can I _NOT_ want my mouth on Gul Dukat? How can anyone not? 
> 
> and lest we forget...  
> I'm with the all-wise RogueBelle: Gul Dukat is physically _mammalian_ \- just as much as he needs to be
> 
> For ShevatheGun - yes! writing 'Dukat Titillation' _is_ the 'Dukat Titillation'.  
> For RogueBelle, yes! it's _'essential'_ to feel Dukat, to hear him groan, to lick him and suck him and bite him.  
> For SparklyQuarians, who unleashes the nasty, with emotion.  
> 

What you’re holding is my written account of an experience I had recently – an encounter with someone. I went to Dr. Bashir for medical treatment in connection with it, and he advised me to contact you for mental health support. I’ll be making an appointment to see you soon, but it’s very hard for me to talk about what happened. That’s why I’ve written about it. If you could read it before we meet, I think that will be very helpful.  
  
The encounter happened on the day when the station was nearly accidentally destroyed by a Cardassian anti-insurgency program – a computer program left over from when this was Terok Nor, when Gul Dukat was in command here as Prefect of Bajor, and Bajorans labored here in ore processing. I’m sure you remember it. We lost life support, we overloaded the station’s power grid, the main fusion reactor blew, lots of people had to evacuate. Maybe you were one of them. I’m guessing you also saw at least one of Dukat’s prerecorded messages to the ‘rebelling’ Bajoran workers, telling them to surrender to the Cardassian authorities. I know people saw messages at Quark’s. In a couple of them, he threatened to kill every Bajoran on the station with neurocine gas. It wasn't a good day. Not at all.  
  
I work in Ops. That’s where I was when everything began, when we saw the first of those messages. Actually, that very first one didn’t concern us so much – it was just really _weird_. Now that I think of it, it's almost kind of funny remembering the same look on everyone’s face, a collective sort of _'what the fuck…?'_ response.  
  
I remember looking for my friend Justin right away, to catch his reaction. I wasn’t surprised to find him already grinning over at _me,_ in the special way he always grinned and raised an eyebrow when he was ready to crack a joke. He was so good at it, such a smartass. I felt very comfortable with him – he was one of the few people I could really be _myself_ with. I didn’t realize at the time how much I felt this way about him. His toothy grin – that’s what represents him in my mind. All of his exuberant, joyful friendliness, it was all in that smile.   
  
His cocked eyebrow, though – that could be trouble. I had one to match. We’d often meet each other’s eyes across the room, and it would take all our strength to keep from giggling and losing it, very unprofessionally. We could just _read_ each other and transmit waves of irreverence and sarcasm between ourselves, wordlessly. I nearly sent us both over the edge after another of Dukat’s early messages when he said something like, “It’s not too late to save your _lives_ ”. His voice sounded so absurdly fervent on the word ‘lives’, I couldn’t keep from poking fun at it. I focused my most smouldering gaze on Justin and mouthed “save your _lllllllife_ ” while exaggerating the letter ‘L’ with my tongue as lasciviously as I could, as if it had the most obscene double meaning. This came out rather more suggestively than I had anticipated, and with the tension in the room already pretty thick by now, we both got super hot in the face and had to turn away from each other to keep our composure.  
  
But it wasn’t long before either one of us didn’t feel much like joking anymore, even to relieve tension. It became apparent that Sisko and O’Brien might be in some actual danger in the ore processing unit, and we couldn’t get them out with the transporter. And then I started feeling even more unnerved when Dukat appeared on our monitors again, which is probably why I found myself standing next to Justin with no memory of having walked over to be with him. It felt better not to be _alone_ when Dukat was present – even knowing that he wasn't actually present, and that I was in a room with other people – not actually alone.   
  
Justin muttered some uncharitable observations about Dukat's face. I remarked that I was more bothered by his neck. It kind of made me shudder. After that we didn’t say anything, while we watched a particularly lengthy message together. It was at least a minute long, maybe two. He was very…wordy.  
  
I’d seen Cardassians before, so Dukat’s physical features didn’t surprise me. But I have to admit – and I’m ashamed to say it – I felt myself reflexively recoiling at the sight of him. Maybe that's understandable. I mean, I don't think anyone would argue that he didn’t look rather _reptilian_ , with so much of his visible skin surface blanketed in scales and outlined with rough bumpy ridges as if he were part lizard or…serpent. On a human, that generally wouldn’t be a good look, right? We’re not naturally drawn _toward_ large creatures with this kind of appearance. Usually we feel the impulse to back away. And if you noticed that I just used the word ‘creature’ – well, that should serve to illustrate the counter-instinctual effort it took to be mature and evolved enough to see past his exterior and regard the man himself.  
  
I wanted to make that effort because I didn’t want to be unfair. I was sensitive about it, because I can relate to not being seen past my _own_ exterior. I looked pretty damn awkward as a kid – as a girl. I can say that with detachment now. I just really wasn’t pretty. More like the opposite. And the people my age – the ones I spent the most time with – never let me forget it. No one was drawn _toward_ me by my looks. My personality was okay, if anyone got to know me a little. I could make friends. But my experience taught me that good ‘looks’ are _the_ most vital social capital resource for a human girl. Throw this girl in among ~~wolves~~ – sorry, _other children_ – deficient in this one fucking arbitrary resource, and she’ll be handled just badly enough in her formative years to develop a neatly warped sense of self by the time adulthood arrives.  
  
The effect was cumulative – all the years of being eyed and labeled as this unpleasant looking, undesirable person. It sort of put a quiet belief in me, like a worm hiding in my gut, that it was true – that I _was_ unpleasant – not just to look at, but to _know_. Things changed socially after I grew up. Evidently, people find me attractive now – they tell me I am, they eye me like I am – and if I look at the mirror objectively – well yeah, I guess I’ve figured out how to pass myself off as an attractive woman. But that old worm still fidgets inside me. It squirms whenever anyone really _looks_ at me. It makes me feel like I'll be discovered, exposed as an impostor, a fundamentally undesirable person posing as someone normal.  
  
So that’s why I felt ashamed about recoiling at Dukat’s appearance. It was unfair to be so shallow about it. I didn’t want to concur with Justin about 'his face' – it didn’t feel right to. And when I said 'his neck' bothered me, it wasn’t so much the physical detailing – the scales and ridges and the grotesquely muscular flared width of it. No, it was what he _did_ with it. It was the tilt of it. The coiled tension in it. The way he stretched it and held his head with a chilling sinewy poise, as if he'd strike at any moment – the secret deadly moment of his choosing – with the precision and control of a keenly intelligent, powerful snake.  
  
It was his _motions_ more than his form, and it was the rests _between_ his motions more than even the motions. It was all his kinetic and _potential_ energy – it was what he looked like he was _about_ to do.   
  
What I’m trying to describe here is that, leaving aside his innate physical features, he appeared to me as _a primed mass of threat_. That was reason enough that I couldn’t look at him without discomfort.  
  
Listening to him was worse. Like, creepy worse. To my ears he tried to sound like a wise, patient father, urging his wayward children to choose the path leading away from ruin and destruction. _“It’s not too late…you will not be harmed…you have my word.”_ He wanted to sound benevolent and fair. Like he truly respected the Bajorans, like he was a special saintly Prefect, an _earnest_ Prefect who only desired reason and resolution. _“I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses…”_ He would be so sad, so powerless against the natural consequences of the workers’ bad behavior. _“I will be forced to release neurocine gas…I was hoping you would be reasonable…I’m sorry, but…”_  
  
My stomach turned as I listened to him address his captive audience as “Bajoran workers”. I would call it _dehumanizing_ if the word was technically correct – I mean, Bajorans aren’t human after all. Maybe _demeaning_ is what I’m looking for. Bad enough that this population had been forced into a diminished life of grueling manual labor in hazardous conditions under relentless threat of torture and death – now he breezily reduced them to the title ‘workers’ as if that was their chosen vocation and entire sum of their being. It grated at me, his fucking arrogant, condescending repetition of this demeaning phrase – even though I wasn’t Bajoran and this wasn’t my present life or my cultural history. No wonder Major Kira seemed to spit her words away from her lips whenever she spoke of this man.   
  
I kept rolling my eyes at Justin, trying to lighten things up a little – I was feeling indignant and almost nauseated. Dukat’s warnings grew precipitously more chilling. He stated that he would kill every Bajoran on the station – he would gas the Habitat Ring. _“Think of your families,”_ he implored whoever the fuck he thought was listening to him.   
  
His pet massacre would begin in five minutes.  
  
It seemed the only way to stop it – from Ops, where we were locked in to protect us from the rebels – was to take out the station’s life support system, eliminating the ability to release any gas at all, deadly _or_ good – such as oxygen. The action made sense to us, so we felt okay about it, for lack of a better word. For a few moments we thought we’d at least bought ourselves twelve hours. Wrong – we learned from onscreen Dukat that because we did that, now the station would fucking self-destruct. In _two_ hours.   
  
Garak – the tailor with the shop on the Promenade – had shown up a little while before, actually wanting to assist in any way he could, being a Cardassian with certain access codes and pieces of relevant knowledge. In no way do I blame him for the next thing that went wrong, but I may forever associate him with it. He tried impersonating Dukat so he could shut down the security program. It didn’t work – it couldn’t work – he said something about being sure we didn’t have enough time, and what happened next was the absolute worst thing ever.  
  
Before we knew what we were watching, we saw an unidentifiable spherical object materializing in the replicator. It was a fucking disruptor. It started shooting up the room. It missed a couple of us. But it got Justin. It _only_ got Justin.   
  
I saw it happen. It was over in an instant. The next instant was the terrible one, the heavy one, the one that came down over me like a lead shroud over my entire body. It pressed on me with its emptiness – the emptiness where Justin had _only one moment ago_ occupied his rightful portion of physical space in our universe. I saw my friend dematerialize. I saw the very last parts of him vanish into nothing. It was horrible. I’d never dreamed that I would see anything like it, ever.   
  
I felt like I should have stopped it from happening, instead of just watching it. Maybe if I'd reached out. Maybe if I'd _paused_ the moment. Shouldn't I have tried? I felt like my mind, my comprehension, my sight, my feelings, everything _inner_ about myself, had dematerialized with him. I felt blank and hollow, and lost. It seemed like all my senses were suspended somehow, like hanging in shards, in dully ringing cloudy shards.  
  
I just stood looking at the _nothing_. I don’t know for how long. Likely not long at all. Dr. Bashir grabbed me by the shirt and hauled me down under the table with him. I remember the sudden yank and tumble to the floor. I huddled there in a shocked stupor. The space beyond my personal haze was a roar of crazed commotion. I heard continued disruptor blasts and yelling. I remember Bashir moving up and out for some reason and then immediately throwing himself back down next to me. I heard more yelling.   
  
And then slowly, kind of like fluid seeping into fabric from edge to center, the sound of Gul Dukat’s voice spread into my ears and through my brain until it reached my processing center. His actual voice. In Ops.   
  
What the fuck was he doing there?   
  
Feels like that’s what Kira spat at him. Something like that.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> if any one of these chapters needs a trigger warning, it is this one.  
> if you, the reader, have ever been taken advantage of, and not known how to feel about it - not known up from down, right from wrong, okay from fucked up, innocent from culpable - this warning's for you.

  
For a long stretch I could hear Dukat’s voice issuing an endless stream of words, unintelligible to me in my emotional state. I also heard Garak raising his voice. I heard others yelling. Over it all, the disruptor shots continued firing. Then abruptly, as though our nightmare train had finally hurtled off its broken track into a bottomless chasm, the disruptor noises stopped and relative quiet settled over us all. After a few seconds I saw Dr. Bashir’s hand reaching into my hiding space and touching my forearm. It took some effort to raise my face and look up at him.  
  
“Agathe? Come on. Let’s see if we might be able to do something to stop the self-destruct sequence.”  
  
Shit, he was right. We still had a major problem! Okay. I crawled out and straightened myself.   
  
Wait. Wait a minute. Dukat. Like… _Dukat? What the hell?_  
  
“Julian! Hold on! Did I hear Gul Dukat in here? With us? Was he actually – _here_?”  
  
“Yes, he’s here! He still is. Talking to Kira. Up there.” He indicated Sisko’s office, pointing with his chin.  
  
“Why is he here?”  
  
“You mean why is he _still_ here? Obviously to press his advantage. He’s not about to help us out of the kindness of his heart.”   
  
I wasn’t tracking yet.   
  
“Um. Sorry, I mean…what’s he even _doing_ here? At all?”  
  
Julian squinted at me as if I’d asked him the oddest question ever.  
  
“You heard him, didn’t you? He said he got a distress call from himself? Saying the Bajoran workers had revolted? He knew it wasn’t actually happening, but he came over here regardless because, you know…”  
  
“…because he’s a dick,” Dax finished, joining us at the table. “He told us he could easily shut down the self-destruct sequence, but he wanted to talk to Kira first – _naturally_.” She smirked knowingly up at the commander’s office and then fixed a quizzical gaze on me, repeating Julian’s question. “How did you not hear what he said?”  
  
Seriously?   
  
One of us had just DIED. Had they – had they _not noticed?_  
  
“I…I guess I was in shock. You saw what happened to Justin…? I…”  
  
Words failed me. _Should I have needed to explain it to them?_ A fellow officer had been vaporized in front of our eyes. We had all been hiding from the same endless volley of disruptor fire that had just killed him. Was it so inconceivable that some of us might _not_ have immediately shifted our full attention to this Cardassian fucker when he entered the scene? That we might _not_ have carefully hung on to his every word? Had I missed some part of Starfleet training?  
  
Apparently I _had_ missed something. Dax pressed her lips together and glanced at Bashir. He chose his words carefully and spoke to me softly.   
  
“Things happen, Agathe. We all know the risks when we join Starfleet. That’s why we’re specifically trained to keep our wits about us under conditions of severe stress. I didn’t observe you exhibiting clinical signs of shock.”  
  
So he was essentially telling me I should have been able to keep my shit together. Like, clinically together. I stood looking back at the two of them, letting it sink in. Okay. Although he’d upbraided me like a smug little prick (he isn't one, I was just upset), I knew he wasn’t wrong. It _was_ essential that everyone be able to function through stuff like this. For instance, right now, with the station’s destruction looming over us. Our lives depended on each of us deploying our mental acuity on demand. Like Dax had done. I guessed she was made of stronger stuff than I was. She’d burned her hands a while ago and allowed herself only about ten seconds of whimpering before she was back in action.   
  
I felt small. I felt small and blindsided and targetlessly angry. I took a deep breath and decided I’d mine some strength from my anger, if nothing else, and recommit to making myself useful. That sounds brave, doesn’t it? It was a nice thought. In truth I think I was way more emotionally cracked up than I had any hope of self-diagnosing. My inner being was all askew, and I struggled to get a grip.  
  
And – I absolutely did not _ever_ get that grip. Dukat swaggered out from his little conference with Kira, announcing that he would leave us and return “in say, twenty-five minutes”, giving us time to resign ourselves to his position that today was a good day to be fucked over, that we should accept whatever terms he’d offered Kira in exchange for helping us out. Instead he fucked _himself_ over when he tried to leave, by triggering an even deeper-level security protocol programmed to tell him he sucked ass as a Cardassian and would have to stay and die with the rest of us. His own personal access codes had just been revoked, so he couldn’t leave anymore, and now even _he_ – fucking former Prefect and commander of Terok Nor – could no longer just stop the self-destruct sequence. So now he was in our boat.   
  
Except it was more like, now he was on our ‘team’. The next thing I knew, the whole group of us were gathered at the ops table to figure stuff out. Like this was normal. Analyze our problem, discuss options, exchange ideas – like we were fucking colleagues. All of us. Minus Justin. Plus Dukat. It was nuts. It was fucking nuts. I couldn’t feel normal about it! How could the rest of them feel normal about it? Maybe they didn’t, but it sure seemed like they did. _How?!_ Justin had died for no fucking reason at all. It hadn’t been a battle. It hadn’t been a training exercise. It hadn’t even really been an accident. It had been a _fuckup_. A senseless _aberration,_ authored by – no, fucking _prerecorded_ by Gul Dukat. In the past. He had fucking reached in _from the past_ and randomly erased _Justin_. And now – seriously, I didn’t understand it – was it because of _Starfleet training_ that everyone else was able to put it behind them and move on, like, _this easily_ , _this quickly?_ When I couldn’t? What was so fucking wrong with me, then? How was I so deficient?  
  
Of course I didn’t want to make a scene. But oh, I was frustrated, I felt – I felt unjustly subdued, put down. My feelings weren’t considered appropriate or professional at this time, Dr. Bashir had made that very clear.   
  
I really wanted to cry. But I don’t cry. I mean, I do cry, but I hate to be _seen_ crying.  
  
I just want to clarify – we weren’t _all_ actively participating in this little collegial brainstorming session. I stood mutely, just watching Dukat. The man across the table wasn’t the discomfiting ‘primed mass of threat’ from which I’d previously recoiled. He couldn’t be that, as he was currently in no position to threaten anyone. No, _this_ man was like…like what?…like a systems specialist. A consultant. Someone with extensive knowledge of our station who’d graciously responded to a polite request to come help us in our hour of need.   
  
It was _so fucking weird_. The space around him sparked with intense collaborative energy. He moved with this kind of joyful animated lightness – I’ve known the feeling – at times when I’ve had to really ramp up my mind and apply it to urgent problem solving, it can be energizing, it can be kind of a high. I guess he was in the right time and place for that, the fucker. I watched his neck. Sometimes he’d punctuate a statement with a little thrust of his jaw, if he was excited, and then his neck did this little rolling motion. _Why the fuck was I watching his neck?_ Maybe because I wanted to wring it, even though it didn’t look particularly wringable. Anyway, he stood and spoke and looked at us all like he was in his fucking element. Back straight, shoulders wide, chest open – a posture of commanding confidence. And why not – Dax was clearly geeking out on the interaction with him, like it was so intellectually stimulating. He probably felt like we were drinking in his input as if he alone dispensed the answers to life’s most important questions. And actually he _did_ dispense the answers to our most important questions just then. So it wasn’t even like he was wrong about that. _Fucker._  
  
So I was angry, very angry in the face of all this acceptance and collaboration with Dukat, very frustrated, very hurt, very upset. Maybe scared too? We _were_ staring death in the face. But I don’t remember being so specifically worried about our impending doom. I was suffocating with a powerless misery because I was feeling this way when nobody else seemed to be, and the way Dr. Bashir had put it, I was supposed to be able to deal with it. But clearly I couldn’t, and I felt like I needed a target but I didn’t have one. It was just _me_ with the problem. Just me, I was the one to be angry at, frustrated with. I was angry with myself and it was eating me up.  
  
I looked at Dukat across the table and felt like, _fuck that._ Fuck that anger at myself. I mean, there – _right there,_ just a few feet away – stood the true progenitor and nucleus of our disaster. _There. Him._ Couldn’t we all just please be mad at _him?_ Couldn’t we at least _fuck him up_ first and then collaborate with him? Did we have to be so mature about this, so _professional_? My friend was gone. This fucker was responsible. UGH.  
  
I looked at him and the table wasn’t there anymore. Our eyes met – actually his eyes locked onto mine for what should have been some uncomfortably long moments – but I’d gone inside my head and mostly saw what was happening internally. I’d jumped him. I’d shoved him into a wall. You know, one of the convenient props that appear in our fantasies. I’d shoved him into a wall _fucking hard_ , and I was holding him against it, holding him with my entire body, pressing into him, grinding myself against him so I could bruise him fucking everywhere on his body. Never mind his armor, it wasn’t there. Then my hands were on his neck, trying to wring it, but he was fighting back now, he had taken my arms and was wringing them like I’d tried to wring his neck, and he was twisting them and pushing me back, forcing me down, forcing me to the floor, wrestling me, getting on top of me, he was fucking strong – he had me on my back under him, his weight was on me, he had me _pinned_ , he –  
  
Oooh, the memory of Justin in my mind didn’t miss this at all. I heard his dry voice, his commentary.  
  
_I see how it is – now that I’m gone, you want to fuck him._  
  
No. Oh shit, no.  
  
No, it's not like that! It’s not that I want to _fuck_ him – it’s – it’s –  
  
I could just see memory Justin’s withering gaze out of the corner of my eye – my mind’s eye that couldn’t look my mind’s Justin in my mind’s Justin’s eye – yeah, I knew this shit was crazy.  
  
_It’s ‘not like that’? Hmm. Kinda looks EXACTLY like that. Don't feel bad, it's probably just stress. Just your ‘fight or flight’ response. Well, maybe ‘fuck or flight’ in your case…_  
  
_“Psst…Agathe…”_ Garak hissed, elbowing me back to reality. I caught my breath and blinked hard. Thank goodness we didn’t have a telepath in our group. As discreetly as possible, I reviewed my patchy memory of what my ears had heard while I was zoned out. The reason Dukat was looking at me was because the two of us were to go do some specific thing at one of the duty stations – what had Dax said just now, dammit – oh! yes, we would bring the Cardassian neutralization emitters online so they would overload the power grid. We hoped to trigger a power surge so maybe we’d short out the forcefields trapping us in Ops and _maybe_ also take out the dampening field that currently made our communicators useless. Right. Well. Hopefully my little impromptu fantasy had cooled me off enough to cooperate with the fucker and do this thing. He and I walked over to the duty station where we could open up a lower panel to access the emitters.   
  
I got there first, just a couple steps ahead of him. As he arrived, he rudely crowded me out of the space I was standing in, pushing me aside with his body and taking my place, like I was irrelevant, like I didn’t exist.  
  
Ohhhhhh. _There_ it was – all the provocation I hadn’t even known I was waiting for. He'd pushed me – that was all it took – I just sort of snapped. With no conscious thought, I angled myself for optimal impact and rammed him with a body slam that he had zero chance to anticipate. He stumbled forward, caught himself on the workstation and then whipped around to stare at me disbelievingly.   
  
“What was _that_ for?”  
  
_“DON’T. SHOVE ME. ASSHOLE.”_  
  
“I didn’t touch you.”  
  
“You fucking shoved me out of your way.”  
  
He tipped his head to the side. “If that’s true, then you must have been _in_ my way, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
I shoved him again, my hands on his armor. This time he held his balance, immovable. I pushed again, to no effect aside from his evident amusement.  
  
“How _interesting_ that you keep trying to displace _me_. I would think you’d want me exactly where I am. After all, I set up this program—”  
  
“ _I know you did,_ you SICK FUCK.”  
  
He blinked. “That’s a little harsh.”  
  
“Oh! _That’s_ harsh,” I laughed, darkly. “You think? We heard all those messages you recorded. You were going to lock women and children in their quarters and _gas_ them! _'Think of your families!'_ ”   
  
He bristled at the direct quote. “That was to be a last resort! If you heard it – I was reaching out directly to the workers first. I was going to offer leniency!”   
  
“Only to feel good about yourself! You wanted the Bajorans to _like_ you. No – you wanted them to _love_ you. You just wanted them to perform their role in your sick little play act, with you as both their executioner AND their savior! First you’d scare the shit out of them and then you’d forgive them and spare their lives, and then they’d _worship_ you!”  
  
Well fuck, that touched a nerve. I read danger in his face. I wasn’t pushing him anymore. He was advancing on _me_ now, intimidatingly, compelling me to step back from him as he pressed forward. Clearly my words were wounding his pride, which only fueled me on. Oh, I _wanted_ to wound him somehow, in some way. I dialed up the mockery in my voice.  
  
“Did you _actually think_ anyone would halt the rebellion to listen to _you?_ Did you think you'd sway them with your _masterful oratory_? Did you think they’d be overcome by the trembling beauty of your voice, the _wetly shining ardor_ in your eyes? How long did it take you to craft all those speeches? Did you toil away for countless sleepless nights? You _rehearsed_ them, didn’t you? You _practiced your performances_ before recording them.”  
  
I felt the opposite duty station against my back – he’d forced my retreat as far as it could go. As he continued his encroaching press, I raised my hands to deflect him, but he seized my wrists, gripping them roughly and grating the sides of my palms against his armor. I struggled briefly to widen the space between us, but there was no winning any part of this contest of strength. He had me and he had me good.   
  
_Fuck_ , _it was true, I didn’t exactly hate this._ Memory Justin was right, my emotional signals _were_ crossed – no wonder that tussle in my mind had looked like a prelude to hate fucking. Clearly I could never win any sort of physical struggle with this man – I could never damage him – he could only ever destroy me – but still _I hungered so badly_ to fight him, revealing the glaringly obvious truth that my body wanted to ‘fight’ him in a very different way.  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” he hissed. His eyes were hard and he bared his teeth a little. “Yes, I did prepare. I wanted to sound sincere. It was important to me.”  
  
“You ‘ _wanted to sound’_ sincere!” I threw my head back and laughed. This was too much. “Listen to yourself! Do you hear how creepy that is? You had to _practice_ your 'sincere' voice. You had to _work_ at your 'sincere' voice so you could convince the Bajorans how much it would hurt your feelings when you had to kill them – could they please just change their minds and give up, because you cared so much! _So sincerely!_ ”  
  
My laughter cut off in a gasp as he tightened his iron grip on my wrists and crushed himself unyieldingly against me. He spoke in a low rumble next to my face, his breath on my cheek.   
  
“How about I ‘sincerely’ _break you_. Hmm?”   
  
His fingers bored into my flesh painfully. His hands began a wrenching motion that I knew would snap my bones if he chose to.   
  
“I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. You can let me know if I sound… _sincere_.”  
  
Oh, he sounded sincere. His body felt sincere, too. I had no doubt he was about to break some part of me. He’d break my spine if he bent me the wrong way too forcefully. He’d break my wrists if he tortured them any harder. He’d break my will if he trapped me like this any longer. He was restricting all my possible moves, all my avenues of defense – save one. In my rising panic I found an opening. His neck was exposed to me. I was tall enough, I could reach – I brought my face to it and bit him fucking hard on the large ridge along the side.   
  
Taking him into my mouth was what broke me. The feel of him drove it home – I mean, now I _knew_ I didn't hate this. _This_ was where I ached to begin our fight, with the thick tough fullness of him between my teeth, he and I each both inflicting pain and convulsing with it – the same joined waves of shattering pain. His hand tore up into my hair, catching a tight fistful and yanking my head back, violently ripping me off of him. I sensed the hot threat of him against my open throat, the taste memory of his texture dancing on my tongue. Then I heard it – my defeat – I heard myself voicing it recklessly in a pleading, guttural moan, a deeply wrung expression of a wracking _need_ for him to take and finish me. My free hand gave me away as well – the one he’d dropped to grab my hair – it obeyed raw impulse by feeling its way blindly to his ass, pulling on him.   
  
I panted helplessly, guessing that he sure as hell couldn’t be missing any of _these_ subtle nuances.   
  
I was right, he wasn’t. The new information apparently swept away his rage at my bite.   
  
“Oh…”   
  
He released his grip on my hair so he could palm the back of my head and pull it forward into its natural alignment. Letting go of my wrist, he brought his other hand up to the front of my neck, cupping it, pushing his thumb onto my lower lip. He watched me close my eyes and fight the urge to suck on it.   
  
“Oh, I see…”  
  
Voices in our periphery began to fade in – our names – “ _Dukat!_ ” – “ _Agathe!_ ” – I realized the others had been shouting at us since they’d noticed our little skirmish. It seemed that he became aware of them now, as well. He moved both hands to either side of my face, eyeing me with a disarming new interest.  
  
“Agat.” He uttered my name softly. “I thought I heard _‘Dukat’_.”  
  
I froze like a small animal in his hands. His sudden probing tenderness made me nervous. He had my name. He spoke it like it made him feel good.  
  
“… _Agat_ …”  
  
My name is unusual for humans. Most people initially stumble over how to say it, endure a few awkward corrections, convince themselves they’ve got it, inevitably forget it, and thereafter endlessly remind me how difficult it is to remember. It’s just spoken in the French way – a regular Earth language – not complicated. But no one I've ever met has understood the sound of it. And if they see it written, the spelling suggests three syllables beginning with an ‘A’ as in ‘apple’, containing the ‘th’ sound as in ‘thing’. Sadly, this version has long gone out of favor – meaning no matter how anyone said it when I was young, I had a ‘weird name’ in addition to my unfortunate looks, just another undesirable feature to taunt me about. The shame it triggered for those years remains and persists, like a decorative ring on that hidden worm in my gut, the worm that nudges me to shrink away whenever anyone looks too closely, whenever they can _see_ me.  
  
_He thought he heard ‘Dukat’._ The irony wasn’t lost on me that he’d stumbled onto a pretty decent mnemonic aid which might prove useful next time I introduced myself. _My name is Agathe, like ‘Dukat’._  
  
Slowly, inquiringly, he slid his hands down along my cheeks, fingers smoothly combing through my hair as they passed my ears, tracing down my neck, venturing onto my collarbones.   
  
“Agat.”  
  
Oh shit, this strangely gentle treatment was going to make me fucking cry. I felt the first stinging pricks of the unwanted tears behind my eyes, like besieging enemy helmets cresting the last remaining hill ahead of my castle gates. It was the wounding sweetness of my name in his voice. Not only that, but the dissonance of these soothing touches against the bone-bruising holds echoing in my wrists. And under it all, the crack in my heart from the sudden loss of my friend.  
  
_No!_  
  
I wouldn’t let him break me this way too.  
  
I dropped my gaze, carefully studying the curious little ridge that trailed all the way over the tip of his nose and down to touch his upper lip.   
  
“Agat…”   
  
I memorized that fucking ridge. _How could THIS man be the one to pierce me like this, with my name?_ What happened to ‘Attention, Bajoran workers’? He was undoing me.   
  
“…I apologize, for shoving you.”  
  
Ah! That saved me. Now I could shake the moment off, with this reminder of how we’d gotten here. I took hold of his wrists as he’d done to me – not to bruise him, but to break contact, to cast his hands away from me.  
  
“Whatever. Stop touching me.”  
  
I pushed his arms back sharply. He didn’t resist. But he didn’t back off either. I glimpsed his smirk as he brought his face to my ear just as he had when proposing to break me.   
  
“Mmm…” he teased, “I don’t think that sounded very _sincere_ …”   
  
“ _…fuck you_ ,” I hissed.  
  
Finally, he stepped off in the direction of the emitters.  
  
_“As you wish.”_  
  
I quickly turned away to hide the discolored mayhem in my face – that is, to hide it from him. Everyone else got a full view.  
  
Kira wasn’t having any of this shit. “Dukat, we're running out of time,” she barked at him from the table, glaring at me flatly.  
  
“This won’t take long,” he answered her. “I know what I'm doing in here.”   
  
His statement gave me an excuse to break eye contact with Kira, so I looked over at him again. He _had_ moved quickly. He was already sitting on the floor efficiently wiring the emitters into the control panel. I retraced the steps we’d taken in our little conflict, crouching near him warily, assessing whether or not I should try to join in – knowing that too many hands can be a hindrance. Probably it would be better to stay out of his way.   
  
_Out of his way…_ So we’d come full circle. I’d body slammed him before – when I had been _in_ his way. He hadn’t been wrong. _I’d been wrong._  
  
_Me, wrong again…_ Now I came full circle around an earlier circle… _what was so fucking wrong with me then, so deficient_?  
  
And around another, even earlier circle. _I felt small…angry at myself, consumed with powerless misery…_  
  
Fuck that.   
  
I just wanted to feel better, feel okay again. The sight of Dukat on the floor suggested a short-term remedy. Once again I let my body’s ideas dictate my private reality, indulging my mind while he focused on the emitters. I crawled onto him and pushed on his armor as before, this time achieving the desired result of laying him all the way down on his back. I fingered my hands into his hair, softly at first, then cruelly in an abrupt double grasp, forcing his head against the floor with painful impact, slamming it a couple more times because it felt good to hurt him, holding him down with _my_ iron grip this time, compelling him to lock eyes with me, wordlessly daring him to say my name – _cry_ my name – as I mounted and rode him so hard I could break _him_ at any moment. Needless to say certain technicalities weren’t an issue – my fantasy, my rules – he didn’t push me off, he was _of course_ already hard and willing, our uniforms weren’t in the way, somehow his arms were restrained above him although I still held his head by the hair…how was that possible?…I glanced past him – oh, obviously I’d cuffed his hands to the railing right there, perfect…my hips eased into a steady, deeply swallowing, fiercely deliberate rhythm, swearing no mercy until I’d wrenched as traitorous a moan from his throat as he’d wrested from mine…  
  
“All right, I'm ready,” Dukat announced.   
  
_Wait, what?_  
  
“All the emitters are attached to the power grid,” he informed us, over his shoulder. “I should be able to trigger the power surge now.”  
  
“Brace yourselves,” Dax cautioned.  
  
Dukat reacted to her warning, turning back to reach around for the railing on his left – no notion of having been handcuffed to it moments earlier – planting his feet a little wider to secure his seated stance. While doing so, he caught my arousal-drugged gaze, a glint in his eyes hinting that he intuited my unguarded, _unfinished_ state.   
  
“You too, Agat,” he said. “Come here.”   
  
He let go of the railing long enough to snatch me with both hands and pull me over to him, settling me onto his right thigh without a moment to spare. His arm encircled me firmly to lock me in, my back to his chest, the angular protrusions of his armor jerking against me as the station underwent cataclysmic shaking and rocking. My belly fluttered wildly when I felt the muscular hardness of his thigh under my ass, bouncing roughly. I pursued the sensation mindlessly, shifting my hips, opening my thighs a little wider. With each jolting bump I greedily pressed myself against his quadricep with equal and opposite force. I couldn’t tell if he noticed – but I also didn’t care. I stole a few seconds of relief – far too few – before all the noise and shaking stopped, leaving us all holding our breaths and listening to the remaining ambient noises, wondering if the power surge had done what we all hoped it had.   
  
The answer was yes, it had – Kira hit her combadge and finally got through to Sisko. The station’s forcefields had shorted out, meaning we could leave Ops now – but it was kind of too late. The main reactor core was still going to overload in about ten minutes, and nobody could possibly make it soon enough from here to level thirty-four, to the place where one last attempt could still be made to keep us from blowing up. Those of us here had done all we could do, other than wait for oblivion or…salvation, I guess. Possibly Sisko and O’Brien would be able to get to that level and prevent our destruction – they were on their way to try.  
  
I sat listening to them, not really having any thoughts about getting up off of Dukat, at first. I was just sort of idly looking at the patterns on his boot and the pant leg I was sitting on. I looked at his arm on my waist too, at the seaming of the fabric on his sleeve, trying to decide whether or not that one pattern right there was technically a chevron, wondering what Cardassians called it – was there a translation or did we just call it whatever they called it, or did ‘we’ call it anything. This was a pretty good closeup view of Cardassian military fabric.  
  
Right about then was when I came back to myself and realized that I was _sitting in Gul Dukat’s lap_. And the first thought I had was to look around for Justin, because he would _definitely_ have seen the humor in this. And then of course it hit me again that he was gone. And then I remembered his voice in my head telling me “ _now that I’m gone you want to fuck him._ ” And I had vehemently denied it, in my head. And then here I was on Dukat’s thigh, and I had just been humping it. So now I felt grateful that Justin had never seen me fucking _humping Dukat’s leg_ , because he would _never_ have let me live that down. Justin would have _owned_ me. I could just see the expression on his face. I could just hear him winding up to let the jokes fly. He would have had _such_ a sarcastic field day at my expense.   
  
I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry.  
  
“Hey, let me go,” I said to Dukat, starting to gather my limbs and adjust my center of gravity so I could get myself on my feet. He took his arm off me, so I thought I was free to go. I was able to partially raise myself, but then he suddenly reached up around my middle with his other arm – his left – and pulled me back down. It happened so fast that at first I thought I had just lost my balance and fallen back on him. But I hadn’t fallen. He had only let me go so he could switch arms. After he got me back down it took me a couple moments to understand what was different, because it came as such a shock. My back was still to him, but _holy shit._ He’d hooked his right arm _under_ me from behind – under my thigh but kind of also under my ass. I couldn’t sort out exactly how – or how so fucking quickly – but he’d placed me on himself in a way that gave him access to me – he _had_ me. He unmistakably had _me_ in his hand. I don’t know how else to say it – if I hadn’t been clothed, he could have inserted digits.   
  
_Damn_ , _he was strong._ I could – _intimately_ , let’s say – perceive the robust strength of his forearm, his hand, his fingers – his angle of attack did nothing to diminish his ability to move them with precision and force. The first thing he did was establish full-handed possession, holding me captive, and _not_ gently. Then he got me with his left hand too. He brought it up around the front of my face and planted it on my right cheek to get a good hold, and then he yanked roughly, torquing my head back in his direction over my left shoulder, forcing me to look him in the face. The twist was so severe – I tried to follow the turn with my shoulders to lessen it, but his body was in the way. I felt him close his thumb in on my chin, so now he held my face in a seriously crushing grip, still pulling on me, carving a strain into my neck, and no fucking way would he let me turn away by even the tiniest degree to ease it.  
  
His face was mere inches from mine. I was looking at that little ridge under his nose again. This was fucking scary and it hurt. I couldn't process what was happening.  
  
“These could be our final ten minutes,” he told me in a low thrumming undertone. The other voices in the room merged into a blur – they were loud and urgent and there was a lot of back and forth over the com – but no one was aware of what Dukat was doing to me, here on the floor in the little sort of walled off area – I think they forgot about him, forgot about me – his moves were quick and subtle and didn’t attract notice – I realized how alone I was with him. For all I knew, it was his greatest turn-on to grab a woman by the pussy and snap her neck – and if that were true, what was to stop him from doing it _now_ if he believed he could possibly have only ten minutes left to live and may as well amuse himself before he went out?  
  
He ordered me to look at him. I _was_ looking at him. No, he wanted me to look him in the eyes.  
  
“ _Look at me.”_  
  
He bored steel fingertips into my face until I brought my eyes up.   
  
“ _That’s it. Look at me…_ ”   
  
He relaxed his fingertips somewhat, but still held me in place sternly. Having secured my eyes, he eased up on the grip with his other hand, beginning to rub very slowly. I gasped at the sudden change in handling.  
  
“ _Shhhhh,”_ he soothed, continuing his unhurried probing touch.   
  
This was crazy. I mean what he was doing there felt good, I’m not going to lie. I was already primed, so to speak – something about him turned me on, I’d already been fucking him in my thoughts, I’d already been grinding on his leg – clearly he had a head start here, and his slow deliberate pace was easily going to make me lose my mind.   
  
But he was going to make me lose it on _his_ terms. He taught me his rules with brutal clarity by simply hurting me when I broke one of them. A cruelly tightened grip on my face, a sharp violent jerk to my chin, a swift painful overtwist on my neck – these were his punishments. He punished me if I whimpered or moaned or made any noise at all with my voice. He punished me if I closed my eyes. He punished me if my eyes were open but not looking at his. _“Look at me,”_ he’d insist, always working his hand on me, sometimes increasing the pressure, sometimes the tempo, but always so steady, so controlled, so _measured_.   
  
I had no choice but to read the cold inevitability in his eyes – he would make me come and he would watch.  
  
He started punctuating each stroke with a harsh demanding squeeze. _Oh… fuck, his hand was so strong!_ It made me want him to bend me over naked and slap me _hard,_ fucking hold me down and hit me so hard, _too_ hard, again and again and again until I was crying and begging incoherently, and then I wanted to feel him hold me and push, push on me like he was too big for me and angry about it, push, shove, _force_ me open, drive the thick brutal length of himself in, in… _UGGHH_ …I wanted him to slam me, pound me, _bone me so fucking hard…!_ This is what he wrung from my eyes while he made me look at him – watching me feel his big hand on me while aching for his cock – I wanted to close my eyes and groan but he wouldn't let me – no mercy in his eyes, so cold, so hard, watching me beg him without begging. I whimpered, I had to, _I had to,_ and he punished me, he hurt me.   
  
_Why_ didn’t I resist? I don’t know! The others weren’t so totally far away, I could have cried for help, someone may have heard me. Why didn’t I fight in some way? I had hands, why didn’t I go for his kneecap, his balls, his eyes, hair, _something?_ It was confusing. It was terrifying. But then I felt like I had _asked_ for this – how could I deny it when I was the one who’d picked a fight with _him_ and grabbed _his_ ass, I was the one who’d fantasized about raping _him_ – come on, I’d cuffed him, slammed his head against the floor, ridden him too hard – I was the one who had pleasured myself on his thigh, who wanted to scream right now from needing him inside me so bad, who was about to _come in his hand –_ how could I possibly say I didn’t want this?  
  
But I could. I _could_ say I didn’t want ‘this’. I didn’t want it this way. It felt so good and it felt so horrible. This wasn’t even about being fucked. He wasn’t fucking me. He was _doing_ me. He was overpowering me in mind and body. He was making me _want_ him to invade me, dominate me, own me, but he was also the one twisting my neck, muzzling me, humiliating me in the open. He fondled and constrained me into a wet, shaking, shivering mess, trying to hold my own mouth closed to choke down my sobs and moans and pleas as he required, struggling to take in enough air, panting through my nose raggedly in violent sniffing spasms, tears rolling from my eyes as he forced me to keep them open and fixed on his.   
  
He reduced me to shame by forcing me to lose control while he watched, forcing me to _want_ it, forcing me to show it all to him in my eyes. He tapped into my private hidden shame of _me_ , of my being, the deep part of me afraid to be revealed and _seen_ – how could I be more seen than this, what was more _seeing of me_ than watching me _come_ on command _,_ than watching me with the assured knowledge that even despite this gutting violation, if I could once speak I would only beg him to _please_ , _please, fuck me now, fuck me hard?_  
  
Oh shit, I remembered he said he could break me and tell me how it made him feel and I could let him know if he sounded sincere…  
  
He murmured me on.   
  
“ _Yes, that's it. That’s good…that's good…yessss, Agat…look at me, Agat…”_  
  
Now rubbing faster, harder, he put even more muscle behind each pressing, stroking pass across my opening, over the wet fabric of my uniform – I was so ready – I was so close – my body shuddered with violent shaking gasps and still he incrementally increased speed and intensity, finally focusing the unrelenting rubbing, digging, stroking motion directly over my throbbing clit. Seeing and feeling me about to go over the edge, he lowered his gaze, dipping his face down to my left cheek, the one he wasn't gripping with his hand, and gently nuzzled his nose against it. _Oh God why, why?_ Then he opened his mouth and slowly, wetly, hotly, he trailed his tongue up along my jaw from my chin to my ear.  
  
That was the end of me. I shattered into heaving screams and cries.  
  
He didn’t hurt me. He released the pulling force on my face, moving his hand to the side of my head, holding it, smoothing my hair, pressing his face into mine on the side where he had just nuzzled, cooing softly, rocking me gently. I could only shake against him.   
  
My outburst had drawn the room's notice, of course.   
  
" _DUKAT!_ "   
  
I had never heard that tone from Dr. Bashir before.   
  
No one yelled my name, only Dukat’s. I guess maybe they had an instinct about the dynamic they were staring at, even if they had no idea what the fuck was actually going on. I don't think he even flinched. I think he felt completely at ease. That's the impression I get from the little I recall of those moments. Somehow I extracted myself from his hold, rolling off him and stumbling to my feet, blindly fumbling my way to a door, getting the hell out of Ops.  
  
I ran. I didn't have a particular destination in mind other than maybe a hole in the ground, which would have been nice, except we don't have any ground to put holes into. I turned a corner into an unlit empty corridor – good enough. I threw myself to the floor and dissolved in the darkness, folding my head into my arms, huddled, crying, sobbing, rocking, broken, hiding, hiding my face. I wouldn't have known or cared if the station had blown up.


	3. Chapter 3

_Round_  
_like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel_  
_Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel_

_Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face_  
_And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space_

_Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!_

  
  


I woke up with the sense that the centuries-old song had been winding through my head for quite some time now, circling in a holding pattern until I would come around and fly away with it. I must have been out for a while. I felt cold. I was lying in my uniform without a blanket. Actually without a blanket or a pillow. In fact the floor under me was cold and hard. I lay in the dark and listened to the song for a while. When it ran out I let it start over.

  
  


_Like a tunnel you can follow to a tunnel of its own_  
_Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone_

  
  


I guessed I was ready to look at the floor finally and acknowledge that it was the floor of the corridor where I had fallen and blacked out. If the floor was here, then so was the station. So that was probably good.

  
  


_Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream_  
_Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream_

  
  


It was dark. Weren’t the corridors usually lit? What was – oh wait, something about life support – also what time was it right now? 

  
  


_Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song_  
_Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?_

  
  


Okay, let’s sit up. I used a hand to push up from the floor. Shit, my neck was tweaked, I couldn’t move that way. Aw _fuck_ , that hurt. Okay, let’s roll over. Okay, I could sit up that way. Shit. My face. Let's just touch it lightly and see… Ouch. _Ohhhhh, damn._ Shit. I was hurting. 

__

I wanted the doctor. The communicators should have been working…right? They _were_ working when —

__

_Fuck._

__

It all came back. Oh, God. I couldn’t talk to anybody, _I couldn't_. Never mind the communicators. Let’s just fly away…

  
  


_Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel_  
_Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel_

__

_As the images unwind, like the circles that you find_  
_In the windmills of your mind!_

  


__

__


	4. Chapter 4

  
  
I got myself up and moving, eventually, letting my feet carry me to the upper level of the Promenade. I chose a window and stood looking out toward the wormhole. My duty shift was over. I was thinking I should get something to eat, then go to my quarters and wind down for the night so I’d be ready to work tomorrow like normal. I would certainly need a good night's sleep if I was going to walk my ass into Ops again as if I weren't a total wreck. And a hot shower might help with the muscle pain. I was going to push _him_ out of my thoughts. Dukat. I’d already given him enough of me. I wasn’t going to let him take away my ability to work, to function. Don’t carry him around. He’s gone. Just let him be gone.  
  
Problem was, it didn’t feel like he was gone. I mean, okay yes he was gone, but… But it felt like he’d _left something behind_. Like he’d left something in _me,_ like…like a barb that breaks off of a poisoned spear when you pull it out. No, that was too accidental…he was more calculating than that, he wouldn’t just _lose a fucking barb_ … No, it was like he’d performed surgery on me – like he’d cut me open and left a scalpel blade inside.  
  
Intentionally.  
  
It felt like he'd left some cutting, insidious little _part_ of something in me, and what was worse was I couldn’t help feeling like I wanted him to come back and take it out. Like if he would just _take it out_ , then I could feel like nothing ever happened.  
  
Until he took it out, I was going to feel like…well, like I did now…like my soul was itching.  
  
I heard voices approaching along the Promenade to my left, and turned my head to see who else was up here. _Big mistake_. I would need more than a shower for the neck, this was pretty bad. Not to mention my right cheek. Even my gums were sore on that side. Good thing I hadn’t tried to eat yet. I hit my combadge.  
  
“Legrand to Bashir.”   
“Agathe! Yes, go ahead.”  
“Could I come see you in the infirmary? I need help. Do you mind?”  
“Not at all! I’m already here. Please, come on in.”  
“Thanks, see you soon.” 

  
  
I wasn’t prepared for Julian’s reaction when he saw me. The bloom of dismay in his eyes hit me in the gut. I hadn't thought I looked nearly as bad as I felt. But his expression told me otherwise.  
  
“Agathe! Your face – come, come sit here, let me look at it.” He led me to one of the patient beds and I sat.  
  
He leaned in to examine me, while I studied his big open dark eyes, thinking about how wonderful it would be if some way, somehow, the beautiful warm _softness_ of them could be spun and woven into a gauzy cashmere of magically all-encompassing gentle brown comfort and caressing stillness – I would drape my world in it and wrap it around myself and bury my face in gathered handfuls of it.  
  
“You were right to come in, Agathe. This is some nasty swelling. And how did you get all this _– oh this is going to bruise_ – this almost looks like – " I watched him begin to figure it out. "Are these _finger marks?_ One, two, three…four…and down here…the _thumb_. This is a hand. This is clearly someone's hand.”   
  
Now he connected the dots. He looked at me, horrified.   
"Agathe, _is this Gul Dukat’s hand?_ Did he do this to you? _”_  
  
I closed my eyes. It felt like too much work to say anything. I took a small breath and let it out again.   
  
“Agathe?”  
I opened my eyes and refocused on him.   
“Did Dukat leave these marks on you?”  
I pressed my lips together and nodded.   
  
“Would you look at my neck, too? I think it might be strained.”  
  
The concern in his eyes deepened into a darker shade of alarm. He began palpating the sore area but when I winced in obvious distress he switched to one of his scanning instruments.   
  
“Oh, Agathe. This muscle is severely pulled." He shook his head. "You must be in agony.”  
  
“I mean, only if I move my head the wrong way.”  
“Don't tell me he did this too?”  
  
I closed my eyes again, wearily. Did I really need to itemize my injuries right now? Well…probably yeah. The doctor needed to know how they happened. Kinda relevant. And there _were_ only two. _Were there only two? Was I forgetting one?_ Not like a laundry list or anything. Still, I just didn’t want to have to think about Dukat in connection with the specific sites of his transgression on my body. Somehow naming him as the cause felt like he was doing it all over again. I just wanted to shrink out of this moment.  
  
“Julian… Yes. Dukat hurt me. He did the face, he did the neck.”   
  
I looked at him. _Please don’t ask me any more about it…please just understand. Please just help._  
  
“Will you help me? It hurts.”  
“ _Of course_ I'll help you. That's what I'm here for.”   
  
I relaxed some, while he ministered to my neck. I felt guarded over and protected, as if Julian’s very body were a shield at my shoulder, an impenetrable barrier between me and a fearsome dark specter behind him, a bringer of pain. As he repaired the muscle, the specter faded away.  
  
Then he came around in front of me, leaning in closely as before. He held a regenerator in one hand, and brought his other hand up to the left side of my face, to my jaw, meaning to gently hold it so he could tend to my bruises.   
  
_Oh God that’s where Dukat —_  
  
I flinched with a small strangled cry and put my hands up to knock Julian’s away. Okay, that was awkward. My hands flew to my mouth and covered it as I closed my eyes and breathed shakily.  
  
“I’m sorry…I guess I’m jumpy.”  
  
He smiled kindly. “It’s quite all right. But I’ll need you to hold still, okay?” He placed his hand tenderly on my cheek again. “Can you hold still for me, Agathe?”   
  
_His eyes were mere inches from mine…_  
  
_“God – no – stop!”_ This time I pushed him on his chest, pushed him away from me. I jumped off the bed and fled to a chair.   
  
“Agathe!” Julian brought over a second chair for himself and sat facing me. I wanted to cover my face again but he took my hands in his and held them between us on my lap. His eyes were so wide and soft with concern. I felt my lip start wobbling – I had to let it – it got away from me, there was nothing I could do. The rest of my face followed suit and crumbled, hot tears flooding over. I heard myself softly keening. I really hate to be exposed this way. But I couldn’t hold it in anymore, Julian’s warmth was too much to bear.  
  
“Agathe,” Julian searched my face – not that my swimming eyes could see that well, I just kind of felt him doing it. “Agathe, what did he do to you?”  
  
_Let me cover my face, let me cover my face…_  
  
He still held my hands. I hunched forward and rocked a little. I was beginning to sob in gasps.  
  
_“What did he do to you?”_ Julian repeated with greater intensity.  
I rolled my eyes and tried to chuckle.  
“I mean, you can see…you can see what he did…”  
_That’s not what he did. I can’t tell you what he did._  
  
“What I _see,_ is that there’s more here than meets the eye.” He was still searching my face, I could feel it.   
  
“Agathe, _what did he do?_ Please tell me what he did.”  
_I mean, obviously he fucked me up…_  
“I don’t know what he did.”   
  
That probably didn't make much sense. Probably wouldn't satisfy him. I tried to steady myself.  
  
Julian gave it a few seconds before trying again.   
“You don’t know what he did?"  
  
I turned my face to my right – the safer side – resolutely eyeing the floor across the room.  
  
“Agathe. Look at me, Agathe. _Look at me._ ”  
  
No. No, no, no. _Not that again._ I folded myself over my lap, over our hands, as if doubled over in pain.   
  
_“Oh God,”_ I groaned. “ _Nooooo…”_  
  
“ _Agathe…_ ”   
  
I felt him remove a hand from our hold and start stroking my hair with it. I gripped his remaining hand in both of mine and rested my forehead on top. Maybe we could stay like this for a while. It was nice and warm and dark down here.  
  
“Dammit, why didn't we leave him with the Maquis,” he muttered. That got a weak laugh from me. “I mean it. I think I may kill him if I see him here again.”  
  
When I felt calmer I sat up. Julian picked away some hairs that were stuck to my face where my tears had dried. In doing so he saw the hand marks. “Oh Agathe, let’s take care of this. Come on. No, stay here. I’ll get the regenerator.”  
  
This time I closed my eyes while he touched my face, and I was okay. When he was finished he put the instrument down and then held my face in both of his hands.   
  
“Agathe? Can you look at me now?”   
  
I nodded and took a deep breath. I opened my eyes. I was able to look at him.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all I had to do was 'live' in the space of what Dukat did to Agathe on the floor in Ops, and everything I wrote in this chapter is exactly what I felt.


	5. Chapter 5

  
  
My quiet plans for the evening changed after I’d returned to my quarters and taken a shower. I decided to go out for a while. There were still a few people out and about, and I wanted to be out there too. Not _with_ them, really, just among them. By myself, but not totally alone.   
  
The station hadn’t gone _completely_ to pieces. Earlier while walking the Promenade I’d noticed that Quark’s was still open. Very quiet and much darker than usual, but open. Julian had filled me in about the life support system and the rest of the station’s status in regard to the shit that had happened with the power grid and the main fusion reactor. Repair crews were on it, and it was looking like we’d all at least be alive through the night, with operations gradually returning to normal over the next several days. Likely sometime tomorrow we’d begin coordinating the return of those people who’d evacuated in runabouts today.   
  
I also learned that Dukat had transported back to his ship, immediately after I’d run out of Ops. Probably, had he wished to, he would have already been able to leave – oh, say, _ten minutes prior_. Ass. If that was true, then why did he risk his life just to fuck with me? He had no more guarantee than anyone else, that Sisko and O’Brien would succeed in their last ditch effort to prevent our destruction. Had he kept an internal eye on the clock? Had he been prepared to disappear at a moment’s notice, just as soon as he'd figured it was time to get the fuck out, regardless of whether or not he’d – ahem, _finished_ his activities? His motivations were puzzling. But why devote any more thought or energy to this man?  
  
Before leaving the infirmary I’d remembered my wrists – felt them, actually – I’d been right, I _had_ forgotten to ‘itemize’ one of my injuries. Julian had been very displeased to see the additional markings. But he hadn’t pressed for details. There wasn’t much to say about it anyway – they were hand marks and it was clear how they’d gotten there. He finally dismissed me to my quarters with an earnest squeeze to my shoulders and an admonition to “eat something and rest”. I felt like I'd escaped from him intact – I hadn't been made to reveal any _truer_ information about what had happened.  
  
I wanted to loosen up and let go, forget my worries for a while, maybe kind of feel like a more relaxed version of myself. Maybe I’d go get a drink at Quark’s. I had a regular night for that. Tonight wasn’t it, but why not just go anyway? I could sure use it. I didn’t feel like eating, as Julian had urged, but I knew that drinking on a _totally_ empty stomach would be a bad idea. I made myself eat a slice of toast and some cheese, all I could manage. I dressed in leggings and a soft button-up shirt and didn’t bother with makeup. I didn’t want to have to wash it off later.  
  
I ordered my usual, a whiskey sour, no ice, asking for a double shot tonight. It seemed that Quark shot me a funny sort of look. That was weird. Why the look? Because of the double shot? Or had he heard something? What would he have heard? I figured I’d imagined it. For the second time today I let my feet carry me to an upper level, climbing the stairs to stand alone at the balcony with my drink, feeling comfortably unnoticed in the dimmer than usual darkness. On a normal evening it would have been a nice vantage point for people watching. But there were so few people out now – even fewer than earlier – that it felt more like I was watching for shooting stars.  
  
The ambience here was also very different tonight, in contrast to the usual chaotic noisescape. It sounded like a quiet private lounge – all it needed was a tasteful musician with a mellow instrument. Sipping my drink, I felt as though I gazed out over clouds of dark tranquility, gentle sounds from below floating up lazily, softly waving, misty tendrils of murmuring voices and quietly clinking glasses.   
  
I surmised that Quark’s wait staff and dabo girls had been among those who’d evacuated the station today, otherwise they’d surely be here – no way they’d get the night off even in these fucked up circumstances. Wasn’t one of the dabo girls named Daphne? The name called to mind a story I’d read as a child, a myth from ancient Greece, an Earth civilization. Actually, this particular story was attributed to a Roman poet…either way, it concerned the same gods, and it had troubled me at the time I'd read it. The gist of it was that the god Apollo was crazy for Daphne, a river nymph. He wanted to love her so badly that he chased her. She ran from him, ran and ran, but knew she wouldn’t escape him and cried to her river god father for help. He turned her into a tree, so that when Apollo caught her, he couldn’t – well, he couldn’t love her.  
  
The story troubled me because, being too young to know about sex or rape, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand _why_ Daphne would run from Apollo.   
  
The thing was, if I could have been Daphne, I would have _let Apollo catch me_. In real life I'd always been treated as fundamentally undesirable. I so wanted to be caught and loved instead. And Apollo was magnificent! He was the god of music and archery and prophecy and sun and light – he pulled the sun across the sky every day with his four-horse chariot! I would _never_ have run away from such a desirable male entity who loved me so much that he wanted to tackle me to the ground with his love. What a tragic waste.   
  
Things were messed up with my parents when I was a girl. They split. And then I had to pacify the dominant scary one by denying my love for the – well, the loving one. Because the scary one bitterly hated the loving one and would punish me for loving him, when my duty was to hate him. I kept myself safe from harm by showing feelings that weren’t true, and hiding ones that were. ‘Safe from harm’ but starving for love.  
  
That’s why if the god Apollo had chased me because he wanted to _force love on me_ regardless of what I either showed him or hid from him, I would have let him fucking catch me. If he wanted to force love on me _even if I was afraid and tried to fight him off,_ I would have let him fucking catch me. If he wanted to force love on me because there was no chance he’d change his mind once he could actually see me – _oh Daphne, why didn’t you just let him fucking catch you?_  
  
Setting my glass on the cocktail table next to me, I noticed a person standing by it, an arm resting on it. An arm wearing that same intriguing chevron-like pattern on its sleeve that I’d seen before. This was no Apollo. _Or was he?_ I’d grown up and eventually worked out that, desirable as he was, Apollo wasn’t such a nice guy. His ‘love’ for Daphne was so selfish that when he couldn’t take her, he _claimed_ her instead – as _his_ tree – twisting from her boughs a wreath which would forever serve as a symbol of _him_ , the mighty god.   
  
“Agat. I was hoping to catch you tonight.”  
  
I looked up at the face from which these words had been dispatched to penetrate my quietude. _Those eyes._ They startled me inwardly, electrically, as if a many-headed snake lying coiled in my depths had suddenly snapped to attention, its tangled necks writhing in anticipation. He hadn’t left a scalpel blade inside me. _He’d left his eyes._ And looking at them I could see that he hadn’t returned to take them out, or to take them back.  
  
“How…?”  
  
He smiled. “Oh, I dropped by earlier and asked about you. Quark told me you’re something of a regular. I offered him a very nice reward to contact me if he happened to see you.”  
  
So I _hadn’t_ imagined the funny look from Quark. He’d sold me out.  
  
“What, you like, orbited the station or something? Waiting for word from Quark? Or did you leave and come back?” I shook my head. “You know what – never mind, don’t even tell me, I don’t want to know.”  
  
He laughed. “I wanted to see you again. I thought you were fun.”  
  
_Fun._  
  
How nice for him that he had a word for it. I hadn’t been able to find one yet.  
  
Thinking the whiskey might give me a little courage, I threw down another couple of gulps. I looked him directly in the eyes, straight at him. I wanted to _own myself_ , and looking in his eyes now, now that he wasn’t hurting me, felt like how to do it. He didn’t own me before, he didn’t own me now, and he would _never_ own me. Just as Apollo would never own Daphne.  
  
But a sinking unrest in my gut foretold that he would _hold_ me. He’d left those eyes in me and I felt their power. They knew me. They were _joined_ to me, to my most inner self, by the imprinted memory of his hand. Not the one that had brought pain. The other. It didn’t need to be touching me to hold me in its grip now. My body automatically responded to its nearness like a harnessed slave. The hand rested casually on the table before me. I tried not to look at it. I remembered it well. Large, strong, demanding. Even now I could feel it already working its possessive hold on me again, dragging me with it to my earlier state from which there’d been no turning back, when I’d been ready, so _powerlessly ready_ for him.   
  
I kept looking into his eyes, those eyes that had reached so terribly deep inside me and _seen_ , seen me. I knew – _and he fucking knew_ – he wouldn’t own me, but what he’d done to me had make me sick with a desire to be _claimed_. I was Daphne and I didn’t want to run from his crazy 'love'. How could I run when he’d made me want to _fall_ , to give myself to his hands? I wanted them now, how could I not? I wanted his hands to claim my face, my neck, my throat, my breasts, my thighs – I wanted him to _kiss_ my thighs – push them apart and claim them with his lips – would he? – what would that be like – would he _lick_ me? Would he trail his tongue along my thighs as he had done my jaw? I remembered it, the thick hot wetness of it – _ohhhh it had ended me_ – I wanted to see him look up at me with _those commanding eyes_ and open his mouth and heat me, wet me, _taste me_ where he had taken me in his hand today – then lower his face and nuzzle, nuzzle me with his little ridge, stroke me, part me with the muscle of his tongue, suck me into his mouth, hold me, keep me, claim me…   
  
_How could I possibly say I didn’t want this?_  
  
He didn’t need to catch me – I was fucking caught. And I wanted it. And _that_ was what made it fun for him. The power. The conquest. But it wasn’t something I wanted to just _give_ to him. I didn’t want to be _fun_ for him – _for him –_ maybe I wanted him, but I didn’t exist for him.  
  
“What are you drinking, Agat?”   
  
“This? It’s called a ‘whiskey sour’. Whiskey is the liquor. The syrup is both sweet and sour.” _Why the fuck was I telling him this?_ “Would you like to try it?”  
  
“Very much. I would love to know what you like to taste.”  
  
_Did he really need to say that?_ I felt lightheaded as my tongue heard him loud and clear.  
  
He drew in a slow sip, looking at me thoughtfully as he swallowed it. “Agat.” He sipped again. “This feels like your name.”   
  
He tried to explain. “Your name is a word in my language, it’s – it’s one of the _feels_ that a particular flavor can have in the mouth. Some flavors _bite_ , others _coat and stick.._.” Tipping the glass in his hand, he absently gazed at the liquid while his lips and tongue explored the sensation lingering inside his mouth. “Your drink – its feel is _‘agat’_ – you hear it isn’t translated – it just feels like what it does."   
  
_"Agat…_ ” He looked at me. “I like it in my mouth.”  
  
_Ohhhhh, I did too… just kill me now…_  
  
I remembered how he'd held my face oddly today, saying my name like it made him feel good.  
  
“Is your name common among humans? I’ve not heard it before.”  
  
“I don’t know. I think it _may_ be, in particular regions of Earth, but it's always been unusual wherever I’ve gone. I’ve never met anyone who’s heard it before, aside from my mother – she named me for Agatha of Sicily.” I shrugged. “Who, of course, you wouldn’t have any reason to know about. I don’t know if many humans would anymore, either.”  
  
“Who was she?”  
  
“She was a woman, a young woman. She lived…about twenty-five hundred years ago, during the rule of the Roman Empire. She had taken a vow of virginity. A Roman prefect wanted to have her and tried to change her mind.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow at the word ‘prefect’. _I’d walked right into that…_  
  
“And did he?”  
“No. She resisted him.”  
  
His eyes took on a predatory gleam.   
“That sounds unwise.”  
  
“She didn’t think so.”  
  
I didn’t want to tell him the rest of the story, which involved gruesome torture – not with him eyeing me the way he was beginning to now, like he had just learned of… _of a rebellion among his workers._  
  
“Give me your hands.”  
“What?”  
  
“Give me. Your hands.”  
  
I held them out to him. He took them in his. The hold seared me with the thrill of first surrender – the first of myself that I'd yielded to him, that he hadn't taken by force. He slid his hands up, just past my wrists, halting on my forearms. He stepped closer to me, very close.  
  
“Why would she choose to resist him, Agat?”  
  
“…maybe…maybe he came on too strong,” I spoke softly to the ridge under his nose.  
  
“No.”  
  
He stepped again, this time moving me with him, forcing me back until he had me trapped against one of the station’s wall struts. “I don’t think so.” He tightened his hold on my arms, pushing them down, pressing himself into my body so that I was entirely riveted in place. “I think, _maybe he didn’t come on strong enough_.”  
  
I looked up from his ridge, up to his eyes. Their intensity could skin something alive.  
  
_“Resist me, Agat.”_  
  
It came to me what he was doing. He was reenacting our conflict from earlier today, when he’d backed me into a wall, threatened me, proved his power to hurt me, restrained me by my arms, removed all my options save one, _exposed his neck to me…_  
  
Now he was _baiting me_ with his neck _._ He wanted me to try it – _just try it –_ to strike out at him to defend myself. His eyes told me he would devastate me as soon as I made my move. I was his fucking prey. He was toying with me before he – before he _what_ exactly?   
  
_Young Agatha, she hadn’t escaped with her body or her life…how did it happen…was it anything like this…_  
  
He watched me. Waiting. Motionless. Daring me.  
  
_Do it._  
  
_Bite it, Agat. Bite it fucking hard._  
  
What choice did I have?   
  
The many-headed snake gnawed at my gut as I absorbed the hard reality of my bind and readied myself for what was to follow. I began lowering my face to the large ridge on the side of his neck – slowly – a most hesitant march to the scaffold. No sign of injury from my previous bite – had there been any it was gone now.   
  
I felt him stiffen at the touch of my breath, steeling himself for the attack.   
  
_Why would he invite this?_ He’d wrenched me off by the hair when I’d done it before – _why did he want it now_ – _why_? Was it like a drug for him? A shot of searing agony exploding into a natural high – enhancing the boner he’d get from overpowering his captive female – _his boner, his high, his…his_ …   
  
Oh, _fuck_ this!   
  
Why should he get all the pleasure and I get all the damage? If he was taking me down again, I wanted some too, why shouldn’t I get some for myself?   
  
What would I get?  
  
_What, Agat – what would you get – what would you want – what, what – ?_  
  
My raw desire answered before I could, and went for it – my nose nuzzling its way onto his ridge, the first contact undamming a deluge of craving I hadn’t realized – I opened my mouth and laid my tongue down. _Ohhhhh it felt so good to me,_ his bumpy ridge felt so right and inevitable _,_ this was _my fucking ridge_ now, _mine_. I moved the whole of my tongue against it and licked him hard and hungry – but not the whole length, I didn’t have time for that because I had to _get him in my mouth_ before he ripped me away – the rigid feel of him on my tongue compelled me to close my lips on him and suck hard, and then lick again greedily, selfishly, move up a bump and _suck_ and pull at him and suck more, and now I was off the ridge and falling over his neck, tasting his bed of scales, drawing my ravenous tongue across his throat under his chin, licking him, tonguing him, this was for Agat, _for Agat –_ at any moment he’d seize me by my hair and it would be over. I feasted on his texture like it was the very last morsel of anything good I would ever know again and I needed to get it, take it, take it from him when he tore me off, at any moment, _at any moment_ …   
  
Of course he didn't tear me off. I can look back on it now and see that I unknowingly pulled off the mother of all surprise assaults, soundly knocking him off his game with the first blow of hot wet pleasure on the sensitive spot where he'd braced for excruciation. I had missed the obvious, I hadn't seen that I had any tactical advantage – but then, I’d also not been trained to think strategically while pinned to a wall by someone I was terrified of and horny for at the same time. I didn’t grasp what was going on right away – that he had almost instantaneously gone out of his mind and was feverishly granting my tongue free rein over his throat, over his neck, over his ridges, over all of his surface that was exposed above his armor and under his face, over all of it that I could physically reach with my mouth.   
  
I focused mindlessly on stealing his texture before _my_ world went black with pain, all of my senses concentrated on what was under my tongue. I wasn’t conscious of him pressing his throat against me and groaning until I began to _feel_ his noises in my mouth. I closed my eyes to savor them – I could see the vibrations shimmering like rippling starlight in the darkness. It felt restorative to wrap myself around the sensation and hold it, feel it, fall into it – _eyes closed –_ ohhhhh, he hadn’t allowed me to do that today, he hadn’t let me wrap myself around the warm undulating waves he had released into my body, he hadn’t let me drift over them and fall into them. He’d made me hold my eyes open so I couldn’t float, I couldn’t sink – but now, _now_ I could, now I could draw my tongue so forcefully and heavily across his scales and plunge myself into his gently rocking roughness, roll around in it, lie down over it. The more I enjoyed him and floated on him and sunk into him the more he groaned and I started to hear it, I heard him breathing heavily, unevenly. I heard him muttering words in soft gasps – they weren’t translated, I guessed whatever he was saying was too dirty to translate.   
  
I realized I could unleash my _own_ sounds now, he wouldn’t stop me this time. I was free to moan with the pleasure of feeling him all over my mouth, to whimper in my impatience – desperate because where I licked I wasn’t sucking and where I sucked I wasn’t licking – I always wanted more of the one while missing the other. While licking and tasting his coarseness I would whimper until finding a ridge segment to suck on – then I’d moan with relief at finding the treasure, finding and closing my lips on it and pulling it into my mouth.   
  
By now overtaken, wild with freedom to abandon myself to sound, to movement, to blind sensation – I began to feel something else – gratitude, so grateful to be free now, free this time – _more_ free anyhow. I began to kiss him wherever I found my mouth. I was on his throat and began kissing it and I heard him say _“no”_ – had I imagined it? He said it again, _“no”_ – but his body didn’t seem to agree, he still eagerly served his open neck to me. I didn’t understand.  
  
I paused. “Should I stop?”  
He moaned his answer, “ _NO – don’t stop, don’t stop.”_  
  
I kissed him more, and again I heard him saying _“no”_ but he was still pressing into me, what did he want?  
  
I paused again with my lips on his throat.   
  
“Tell me, tell me what you want.”  
_“…your tongue,”_ he gasped. _“Lick me…lick me…”_  
  
I teased him with another kiss. His moan was fucking delicious.  
_“No…lick me…”_  
  
Another kiss, slow, soft, lingering.  
_“Ohhhhh Agat…please…please…”_  
  
This fucker didn’t deserve to be allowed to beg for anything after what he did to me today, when he had watched me beg him without begging, begging for what he was making me want so bad, what he could _see in my eyes_ that I wanted so bad. He didn’t deserve either my permission to beg or my mercy, but I was overcome with lust for the feeling of power it gave me, just this _small simple power_ , to hear him beg for what only I could give him at this moment. It turned me on so much I couldn’t stop myself from licking him again, just as he wanted, so I gave it to him and took his violent groans all over my tongue, took them for myself.   
  
I wanted to make him beg again so I tongued my way over to his ridge, to _my fucking ridge_ that I had claimed – I licked and sucked it all along its length now, starting at his shoulder and moving up voraciously. When I had reached as high as I could, almost to his ear, I began kissing it. I knew what he wanted. I wanted to hear him say it.  
  
He writhed. _“Ohhhhhh Agat…no…no…please…”_  
  
No fucking way. Say it. Say it.  
  
“Tell me.”  
_“…please…pleeeease, Agat…,”_ moaning so hard against me, straining.  
  
More kisses, warm, softly pulling kisses.   
  
Between kisses, “Tell me what you want. Tell me…”  
_“…Agat…”_  
  
“Tell me.”  
_“…suck it, suck it…pleeease…please suck on it…”_  
  
“…that’s it….say it again.”  
_“Ohhhhh Agat…!”_  
  
“Say. It.”  
_“Suck me! Suck me! Ahhhhh, Agat! Please!!”_  
  
I wanted to swallow his groans again so I gave him what he asked for, and now his hold on me turned to iron. I don’t think he knew where he was anymore. He started grinding himself into my body, below his armor, shoving his unambiguous _need_ against me so madly, so roughly, no way I’d miss it even with that fucking armor crushing a new series of bruises into my torso. I wouldn’t go to Julian for those.   
  
This was starting to hurt, but I also found that sucking on his ridge paired perfectly with the pain. If he’d had any rational mind left, maybe he’d have released my arms so I could help him out – I would have immediately ripped into his pants and taken him and jerked him off, just to feel him, just to feel what he was pushing into me, just to feel him in my hand –   
  
_What the fuck was I thinking, that’s not what I would have done!_  
  
No, if I’d gotten that far I would have dropped to my knees and had him all the way in my mouth so he could take me right there – ohhhhh I had to close my eyes and let that fantasy surge over me and into me while I sucked him and he thrust himself against me. To be honest I thought it _might_ have felt too demeaning to let him do that to me for real, the way I wanted it right now, the way I wanted him to look down on me and grip me by my hair and _have_ me, have me _hard,_ have me _mean._ I wanted that but I also didn’t want it – I wanted some of it but not all of it – okay most of it but not all of it. I wanted him to take me and overtake me and end me but not…not diminish me, not reduce me to nothing.  
  
I heard him asking me to suck on him more, more – but this time I wasn't the only one to hear it. It had only just occurred to me that we might possibly have been disturbing the dark tranquility of the quiet downstairs 'lounge' with…oh, these would have been some, well, some _explicit_ sounds floating down from the balcony…heavy breathing and gasps, whimpers, groans, maybe some muffled thumping, maybe some _wet_ sorts of noises, certainly a man loudly moaning what sounded like "suck me – suck me – ahhhhh, ‘oh God’ please!"   
  
I mean, it wasn’t like it was the most family-friendly sort of place anyway. But even Quark had his limits. He roared up at us from below.  
  
_“DUKAT!”_  
  
I had _never_ heard that tone from Quark before.  
  
_“GET. A. FUCKING. ROOM!!”_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

  
  
This was the first time I’d witnessed the orange shimmer of a Cardassian transporter beam from the inside. I rematerialized somewhere on Dukat’s ship, very disoriented by the sudden and total reconfiguration of my surroundings – the nearest of which was his embrace. He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him – getting us that room – leading me through unfamiliar dark corridors, past curious Cardassian men, through a door, into his quarters. I mean, it had to be his quarters. Rather spartan in its furnishings. Dimly lit. The warmth was nice – I’m thin and get cold easily. Wait, why would I even think about that? Well…because _of course_.  
  
I almost kind of laughed at my situation, which really wasn’t very funny at all. Apollo had tackled me _and_ made off with me to his chariot in the heavens. _Seriously?_  
  
But if I’d felt alone with him before, this was a whole new level of it. I hadn’t worn my combadge. _No one_ knew where I was. There was no river god father to help me here. I didn’t know how I’d get back. I didn’t know _if_ I’d get back, or when. All I knew for certain was _why_ I was here. Where was there to run now?  
  
I perceived that I had exactly one choice. I could fight him and…die…or something. _What would happen if I fought him?_ Or…I could run _into_ the danger and maybe it wouldn’t _kill_ me to die – or something. I damn well knew the danger had become my fucking desire. Was this really a choice?  
  
His boots were off. I looked at his armor.  
  
“That has to come off too.”  
  
No argument there. He removed everything hard and bulky, placing it all on a bench of sorts, out of the way.  
  
When he faced me again, his appearance in the remaining dark fabric took my breath away. I’d always liked the look of a man in black. This was no exception. He was handsome. _How had I not seen it?_ And without the armor – he was _sleek_. His lines were transformed. His body looked like the depthless velvet night following in his wake as he pulled the sun across the sky. Just as on the balcony, my raw desire knew what I wanted before I did. My desire recalled that my hands were free now – free to be on him, to _move_ over him, to explore him, to feel him. I found myself running my hands over the places where his neck had met his armor – here there was no rude interruption of his surface, no incursion of indigestible shell onto delectable fruit – it was spellbinding. I stroked my palms over his collarbones because I could, because they lay under my hands, because they were _him,_ because they were quiet. I brought my lips to them and kissed them.   
  
Kissing this part of him brought about a strange moment for me, a twisting pang of futile longing. Something about the accessibility of his simply and darkly clothed body, something about the unarmored nearness of him and the quietness of the new terrain under my lips – something about the warmth around us – somehow it felt like rest. I wanted to fold and _rest_ on him, against the darkness of his chest, just stop, just rest. Just hold. I wished I could. This was like times when I’d been exhausted but didn’t know it until I sat down. Kissing his collarbones was like suddenly sitting down, like my heart’s knees had buckled under.  
  
It had been a wretched day. My friend had died. The rest of us had nearly died. This – this man under my lips had set the core of me on fire and leveled me to the ground, only returning to see to it that I was still in flames, still in collapse. If he would just hold me now, we could stop. I would lie on him, on the darkness of him. I would sink into the warm night. I wished I could. Just for this moment, I wished I could. I moved my arms around him like I could have him this way, like he would hold me this way.   
  
But I knew he hadn’t brought me here to comfort me. Here I was even more alone than alone.   
  
His response to my arms around him didn’t compute at first – his hands went to my ribs and firmly pushed me away. As I stood muddledly absorbing the withdrawal of his hold, he finished undressing his upper body and then it made sense – he was just moving us along. He reached to take me in against himself again.   
  
“Wait, wait – ”  
  
I put my hands up, on his chest just under the collarbones, pausing him at my bent arm’s length. I had to see. I had to drink in what he had just unveiled to me. _Who the hell was responsible for dispensing beauty in this universe?_ This was unfair. His form was taut with his strength, pleasingly shaped by it, by his lean strength, his tightly coiled physical power. Arms, shoulders, chest, abdominals – his body held all the primal, potent _male_ allure that I thirsted to be looking up at – from underneath, from heady submission, from on my back. His texture was liberally enhanced in places – ridged – ornamented – so sweetly frosted with scales – down his shoulders, over his pecs, under his ribs, tracing his waist.   
  
_“You’re fucking beautiful,”_ I breathed.  
  
His body had me in flames, in collapse, _in ruin_. I wanted – _I needed_ – to be naked on him. I needed to be naked on him everywhere possible. My fingers went to my shirt, unbuttoning it, opening it, exposing my breasts to him. They’re small, I hadn’t worn a bra tonight, I hadn’t needed to. Up until just now I’d forgotten that he had yet to peel away _all_ my defenses, that I could feel _any more fucking vulnerable_ before him, that he hadn’t yet seen, _hadn’t seen me_ , even after all that he’d already torn open. I felt self-conscious about my breasts. They’re beautiful, I know they are, but – it’s the _‘but’_ that’s always eaten at me, shamed me – _but they’re small_ – deep down I feared they could never be enough – anyone who discovered them would discard me, wouldn’t want me. I felt this way when I opened my shirt to him, when I saw _his_ eyes discover me, utterly defenseless at last. As ever, I was afraid to read them – reading them might destroy me even more.   
  
_But why should it fucking matter?_ He didn’t deserve an opinion! He had _brutalized_ me today. He should have treasured me. _Fuck him._ I was so angry. He was such a destroyer. But then, it was my anger that had made me want to fuck him in the first place.   
  
_Damn this man, this fucking beautiful man._  
  
I needed to come in for the attack, get away from his eyes, take him down, take him with the only effective means I’d learned so far in our brief history – get back on his throat and ravish it again. This time l led the charge with my breasts so he could fucking feel them – I threw my arms around his neck, pulling my body into his, pressing, rubbing my nipples on him, aggressively, roughly – _feel them, fucker, feel them – they want you, feel them –_ if anything, my unobtrusive breasts served excellently to usher so much more of my sensitized skin into contact with his, they allowed me to _have_ so much of him, to _devour_ so much of him with so much of _me_. Just as before, I was tormented by a stinging anticipation that he would rip me off him _at any moment –_ only this time it was my breasts rather than my tongue, that fought to steal his texture before he could throw me away from him.   
  
And he _was_ pushing me away – his hands were on my ribs again, pushing me.   
  
_“_ …Agat… _”_  
  
I couldn’t help it – I tried to read his eyes. I saw menace, stabbing menace.  
  
_But his eyes always looked like that, didn’t they?_  
  
He wasn’t pushing me – he was pulling – holding my waist, not my ribs – pulling me down.   
  
“…Agat…come here…come here…”  
  
He was pulling me down, onto him, onto a chair, onto his lap, so that I straddled him.   
  
_ohhhhhhhh my god – I could feel him, I could feel him_  
  
This time no staggered delay in comprehending what the hell I wanted – my desire, my hips, my mind, my _need_ , every aspect of myself all together _fucking knew_ what to do with what was underneath me, between my legs, in his pants, under my leggings – _ohhhhhhhh god he was hard, he was so hard_ – probably those curious Cardassian men out there heard my crying groans – _oh fuuuuuuuccckkk –_ I was pressing, rubbing, grinding on him, grinding myself dizzy, didn’t take me long to come on him all over again, _ohhhhhhhh_ this man’s body could make me come so hard, so good, _oh my god_ and I could hold him, I could hold his face against me, hold his head, I could weave my hands into his hair and hold him to myself, and hold him, and hold him, and hold him, and ride the waves and crash and go under and come up again and _come on him, come over him, come in his lap, oh my goddddddddddddd_  
  
That was just the first of it. This didn’t end me, _oh hell no,_ this didn’t end anything.  
  
My hands were in his hair. I pulled his head back to see him, to see his eyes again. I saw that same intensity, the intensity that could skin something alive. I wanted him to skin _me_ alive and he did, he slid my shirt off my shoulders. I let go of him so he could slide the shirt all the rest of the way down my arms and off of me. He skinned me and then while looking into my eyes he claimed my breasts with his hands and I gasped – in his eyes I could see it, I could read it – he wanted me, _he fucking wanted me._  
  
I looked down in wonder at my breasts being enfolded and ardently fondled in his big gray Cardassian hands. They looked like rugged artist’s hands – the coarsely deliberate hands of a fevered artist burning with inspiration – fervently yet painstakingly sculpting a pair of achingly delicate living figurines out of great big chunks of rough unpolished marble. _How could this man be the one to chisel me and show me my own beauty?_ He eyed the marred skin where his armor had crushed against me earlier, moving his thumbs from my breasts just far enough to lightly caress the marks. He pressed his lips to me there, deeply, his first kiss on my body, his only kiss on me anywhere so far. I shuddered, weaving my hands into his hair again, my thumbs caressing his brow ridges, I kissed them, I kissed all the ridges on his head and his face that were near enough – I’d never been so glad for small breasts before – with his face on them it only meant I could feel him so close to me, I could reach more of him with my lips, my face.   
  
I wanted to _see more_ , see more of him handling my breasts – it aroused me to be so totally vulnerable to him, so small, so soft, so breached, so commanded, so mastered by this man, this rough, bullying, infuriating man, this _fucking brute._ I wanted to watch him have me. I wanted to see him take me. He had my breasts. I wanted to see. I watched him rub his cheek, rub _his ridge_ on my nipple, the little ridge under his nose, above his lip. _Ohhhhhh god take it, fucking take it._ I gripped his hair, panting shakily, fingering his scalp. I watched him extend his tongue and press it against me under my nipple. I held his hair, gasping, moaning as he licked heavily, over and over, licked the underside of my breast, sliding his open mouth over me and sucking me in, sucking warmly, sucking fully, then _so fucking hard_. His breath was hot on my skin, his ridges bumpy, they almost scratched me, I wished they did, I would have bled for him.  
  
I moved one of my hands to hold his jaw and trace my thumb along the ridge leading to his ear. I could feel the working of it as he persistently took and released his sucking hold only to lick me again, then retake a mouthful and pull and tug. I watched his lips, his tongue on my nipple, I looked at the joining of our two textures together. I was soft, I was smooth – he was rough, he was harsh – I was pink, I was demure – he was stone, he was crude. Together we were wet, hot, steaming. As he demolished one breast with his mouth he crushed the other with his hand, no longer the sensitive sculptor – I didn’t care if he smashed me with his hands, with his mouth – I was out of my mind, I wanted him all, I wanted him _hard_ , I wanted him painful, I wanted him devastating.   
  
My hips were moving, they were working him – I was kneading myself with him, grinding myself insatiably on his stone hardness under me – but now I wanted it, I wanted it out, I had to have it and hold it. I backed off a little so I could press a palm to it and stroke it and feel its size and shape and swell. It wanted out, he groaned and strained, pushing against my hand in return, breathing so hard, he was so beautiful when he heaved and gasped in his mindless need. I wouldn’t be able to kiss him soon enough, it was going to take too long, much too long to remit him to my care and keeping. I pulled at the waist of his pants, only signaling what I wanted – it would be quicker if he took them off himself, they were his after all. While he opened them and removed everything I got up just enough to peel my leggings off too, get it all off.  
  
And then there – there he was – there he was – _again who the hell distributed all the fucking treasure in this universe?_ I felt weak at the sight of him, the sight of his cock, it was large, it was enhanced and ornamented just like the rest of him – more so near the base of it, leaving slick smooth full ripeness extending to the tip of it. I sunk to my knees between his legs and fell on him. I took him in my hand and pressed him to my waiting tongue, as much length as I could lay against my tongue all at once, and I licked him like it would save me, like I was plummeting off a cliff and only my tonguehold could save me from falling back, falling away…  
  
He caught me by my hair – only catching, not ripping – he pulled me up a little, bringing me up enough to reach his face as he bent down to me. He held my hair with one hand and stroked it with the other, I stroked his wet length with mine – and he kissed me again, tenderly, on the peak of both my cheekbones – _“Agat,”_ his second kiss – _“Agat,”_ his third – I never knew when this man would release these sudden, these scarce drops of sweetness, he _slayed_ me whenever he did. I returned to his treasure, to kiss it, he was so sweet to me sometimes – more like never, _but sometimes_ – I just wanted to kiss sweetness back onto him from my lips, from my lips onto this sweetest part of him, this delicious part of him – it was _fucking_ delicious. I started licking again, all over, bottom to top, under, over, sides, everywhere. I slid my mouth over the top and took him, plunged over him, all the way down, taking him, taking him all, all the way in to me.  
  
_“NO.”_  
He pulled me off him by my hair.  
  
I panted in disbelief. _What?_  
Looking up to his eyes – I couldn’t read what was in them. Menace, sure, but also _…a gleam…_  
  
“You like to lick me.”  
I stared at his eyes, breathing, “I do.”  
  
“Then lick me, Agat.”  
  
I licked. I watched his eyes and savored him on my tongue. This was not a problem.   
  
I kissed him again, _ohhhhhhh_ my lips could bless him forever, I rubbed them on his throbbing goodness, all up and down, I held it to my face and nuzzled my cheek on it, it felt so good to me, it was nice to me, _thank you for being so nice to me, so good to me_ – I licked and kissed and then I wanted him in my mouth again – this time testing first, what would he allow? I ran my tongue around the tip and softly drew it between my lips, just the warm tip…  
  
“No, Agat.”   
He gripped my hair tightly and pulled me off again.  
  
“Lick me.”  
  
_you don’t understand – you can’t hurt me this way – I want it all – I want the pain, the relief – I want the damage, the repair_  
  
Oh, but he did understand. That was the gleam in his eyes. He was – _no, we were_ – playing. Punishing me, slaying me, so roughly, so sweetly. _This beautiful man…_  
  
Now I knew. Ohhhhh, now I was going to get it, get it Agat…  
  
I looked up at him. Kissed him. Kissed him on the base, on his scales.  
  
My lips on him, wet, soft, reverent.  
  
“Tell me. Tell me what you want.”  
_“Lick me.”_  
  
Licking…  
_“Yes…yessss…lick me, Agat.”_  
  
Kissing, licking…  
_“That’s it, Agat. Lick me more...”_  
  
Licking, moaning, drowning him on my tongue.  
  
“Is this good? Is this what you want?”  
Gasping, _“ – YESSS – it’s good, it’s good Agat…keep licking…”_  
  
Taking him in to me, sucking him, _oh god…_  
He pulled hard, pulled me off.  
  
_“NO, AGAT. Lick.”_  
  
But I took him in me again, I had to have him.  
He gasped, he yanked with even more force.  
  
I panted over his cock and licked it and whimpered, and stroked it with my hand, and kissed it, kissed the tip, licked the tip, kissed it, _and then took him in me again…_  
  
He yanked, he wrenched, he held my hair so tightly now, both hands grasping, he was breathing so hard and shaking, clenching his teeth…  
  
_“ – Agat – Agat – lick – me – ”_  
  
I slid him all the way in, I held him in my mouth, I loved him with my tongue, all over, all around, I sucked him…he was so sweet, so beautiful…  
  
He tore me off of him, violently, roaring his groan over me – I’d provoked him too far – he moved me off, he was bending forward, over me, rising – he leaned over and seized me at my ribs – his grip felt angry – _ohhh_ \- he was pushing me – almost lifting me but I’m a little tall for that – he was pushing me back, pushing me down, lowering me, I was on my back, I was across the bed, naked, spread, looking up at him. He was moving in for the kill, with deadly purpose, he was going to shove it in me, shove it in me hard, brutal – he was going to _kill me now – kill me hard –_  
  
But not yet. Not yet.  
  
He knelt, between my legs, he looked in my eyes, he felt with his hand, _ahhhhhhh his hand_ , this time his hand was wet with me. He felt for his point of entry, his invitation, he teased it with a finger, he rubbed his big rough hand on me. I writhed, I cried, I was going to pass out from aching for him, for his cock.  
  
He held it at my entrance, he teased me with the tip of it, he pushed it in just a fraction and then slid it out, pushed it in again, _just the cruellest fraction_ and then slid it out again, touching, teasing, nudging…  
  
I tried bucking my hips, I tried reaching him, getting him, taking him, _he was right there, he was so full and hard and slick_ – but nothing would ever happen unless he let it – _fuck he was so beautiful –_  
  
“ _Shhhhh,”_ he soothed, and now he lay his cock over the top of my mound, drawing the ripe wet length of it along the groove between my lips – slowly, steadily, heavily – I watched it, I watched it on me, I drank in the sight of our textures together, his scales near the base, panting, trying to count how many ways I wanted this man inside me right now, _oh god_ , but I was too out of it, wasn’t getting enough oxygen to calculate that sum.  
  
He stroked me with himself – right there along the top, right where I was most sensitive – back, forth, back, forth – firmly, measuredly – he soothed – I closed my eyes and breathed deeply to the slow heavy rhythm of it. I floated – he brought me close to coming again but held me not quite there – just floating, just bobbing, just rocking on the waves – _ohhh – ohhhhhh – he knew how to kill me – how did he know how to kill me –_  
  
“…that’s it, Agat…that’s good…”   
  
I felt his warm thick treasure stroking me, stroking me, and then I felt him giving even more to me, he slid his large fingers into me, he slid them evenly, fluidly, in me and out of me, all the while heavily stroking me above them, steadily, steadily…  
  
“Agat. Open your eyes. Look at me.”  
  
I opened my dizzied eyes and let them refocus, letting them find his eyes.  
  
_Was it truly menace if it was always there, always in his eyes, if that was just…how they were?_  
  
He pulled his fingers out of me and raised them to his lip, his bottom lip.  
  
_“Agat…”_  
  
Looking at me. Lowering his lip with his fingers, sucking them into his mouth. Licking my wetness.  
  
_“…I like it in my mouth.”_  
  
I didn’t know how many more ways I could die. It was so hard to count. He was undoing me. Actually he was _doing_ me. Again. But good this time. I might have already been dead, I didn’t know anymore.   
  
He did want me in his mouth, he wanted to taste, his head was between my thighs. I saw, I felt him kiss them both, one kiss each – _his fourth, his fifth_ – then he nuzzled his face in me and I looked and I saw and I felt – his ridge, his little ridge, _his beautiful little fucking ridge –_ he teased me with it, _right there, right there…_  
  
He gave me one sweet lingering kiss in the center _– six –_ I stopped counting here, no brain left, I was done, I was over…  
  
He looked up at me, he issued a command.  
  
“Agat. Hold your breasts for me. Squeeze them for me.”  
  
_where were my hands? – where – ohhh, in his hair, in his soft hair_  
  
I took my breasts, I squeezed.  
  
“Harder, Agat. Show me.”  
  
_Oh my god_. I worshiped them, I reverenced them, I did what his hands had done to them.  
  
“Good. Keep doing it. Hard. _Hard, Agat!_ Good.”  
  
He supervised for a few seconds.  
  
_“Now watch me, Agat…”_  
  
I watched.   
  
Oh god his tongue, his whole tongue, I saw, _he claimed me with it,_ I felt it – I couldn’t watch anymore, I threw my head back against the bed moaning helplessly and writhing and closing my eyes and I saw it all in the darkness on my lids. It only hurt a little – he was rough – no he wasn’t rough – just purposeful, effective – he sucked or did he nibble, I couldn’t tell, whatever it was it was sweet it was swift it was sharp – and then the warm wet sliding _filling_ of me, the wet muscle, the softly pliable probing, the warm wet expansion, the working of his lips, his mouth, his jaw… _ahhhhh he was bringing me there, all the way, all the way, bringing me…ahhhhh…_  
  
I couldn’t remember being angry at this man. I mean I had the knowledge of the fact, but not the memory of the emotion. How would it even be possible to be angry with him? How would it be possible to be angry at someone loving me with his mouth, where I was most vulnerable, most sensitive, most _myself_ – someone caring for me with his lips, his little ridge – someone tending to me with his tongue, his tender tongue inside me – kissing me, breathing love to me inside me?  
  
But still I had knowledge of the fact, and it reminded me of another I’d forgotten, about Apollo – he had angered someone too. I remembered – the god Eros had been angry with him. Because Apollo had been running his mouth, boasting, being an arrogant asshole, mocking Eros and cracking mean jokes about his archery prowess or lack thereof – Apollo being the true and powerful archer, Eros being just a _‘girly’_ archer, with his love arrows. Eros finally got fed up with the abuse and shot Apollo so that he’d fall in love with Daphne – _that_ was why he’d chased her, _that_ was why he’d been fucking crazy. And that hadn’t been enough for Eros, he was _quite_ fucking angry – he shot Daphne too, he shot her with a hate arrow – that’s why she was running from Apollo. She could only hate him, she would rather die – or something – than be caught by him.  
  
“Agat…Agat…open your eyes, Agat…”  
  
I saw his eyes first, when I opened mine. He had come back to me, this sweet fucking beautiful man. He was above me, his body positioned over me – I saw, I felt, he was _a primed mass of threat,_ here to take me at last, to kill me, to finish me. I looked up at him – he looked like a god to me now, a god from another world. It was his alien texture, his large and terrible neck ridges, his inhuman scales, the great flared width of him, his coiled power. It was his _eyes_ – the menace in them – no it was _fire_ – cold, timeless fire. He looked like something _magnificent_ over me, something so other than human. I could only fall back and surrender myself to something so magnificent. Clearly these were my orgasms talking – I couldn’t lay claim to even the last shred of my own sanity underneath him now. Given how he’d made me come as he’d done, over and over and over, forgive me but how was he _not_ a fucking god?  
  
My thighs yielded to him, I was ready, I was so powerlessly ready for him. He pushed, he pushed himself – _ohhhhhhhh_ – he breached, he opened, he entered, he took territory, he took it over – oh god it was everything, _everything_ – he was so inside me, so _deep_ inside me, so everywhere inside me, he was all my body knew anymore, oh finally finally I had him all, all inside me, so inside me, _where was I anymore…_ I was so _under_ him, so overcome by him, so consumed, so invaded, so taken.  
  
But now he really _did_ invade – he was taking me the way I’d wanted it all along, _before_ , before I’d forgotten how to be angry with him. He was killing me the way I had wanted _before_ – hard, rough, unyielding, brutal, punishing. He wasn’t stroking me, rocking me – he was pounding me, smashing me, taking me with force, with his overtaking power. He grabbed my face and crushed his mouth over mine and shoved his tongue inside me so savagely that I could only suck on it, not a kiss, it was hard to breathe, it was hard to move, his arm was on some of my hair and I couldn’t move my head – he was going to destroy me – he was going to destroy me and it would make him come and he would reduce me to nothing.  
  
It wasn’t what I wanted anymore. I was caught and now I wanted to be _loved_ , not killed. He was hate fucking me. I knew that’s what I had wanted! I had wanted to hate fuck him too, I had wanted that. But not now, not anymore – _so help me all I wanted to do now was love fuck this man!_  
  
It hurt. Not physically, it didn’t hurt physically. But it did hurt. I was going to cry, it was going to happen. I hate crying. But it didn’t matter. I had no defenses left. I had no strength. He was killing me. He had already killed me but he was doing it again. I felt hot tears welling, I felt them spill over.   
  
He saw them. He had come up off my face, maybe to get some air himself, when he saw my tears. To my amazement I read something new in his eyes, something like _concern._ He let up on the pounding.  
  
“Am I hurting you?” he asked me.  
  
_excuse me?!_ – _where was I anymore – with this man asking me this question_  
  
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him through the water in my eyes.   
  
Well, why not just tell him.   
_“Yes,”_ I whispered.  
  
He noticed his arm trapping my hair. “Oh, sorry…” he moved it.   
“No – no, that’s – that’s not it – ”  
  
He waited, watching me.  
  
Closing my eyes, tears fleeing my lashes.  
I could think of only one way to explain it.   
  
Opening my eyes.   
_“I want you,”_ I breathed.  
  
Time froze, I swear it did.  
His eyes just – changed. Where was he? _Who was he?_  
  
_“What did you say?”_ he asked.  
Watching his eyes. “I want you.” I couldn’t identify what was in them.  
  
"Tell me again."  
  
_What had my words just unlocked in him?_  
  
Weeping quietly. "I want you. _I want you._ "  
  
He searched my face, I had no idea what for.  
  
Then he started kissing it – softly, warmly.  
_“No, don’t cry.”_  
  
He held my face in his hands, tenderly, caringly. He kissed my jaws, my cheeks, my brows, my forehead, my temples. His voice was so sweet, his breath so gentle.  
  
_“Don’t cry…don’t cry…”_  
  
He kissed my tears, everywhere they’d fallen he kissed.  
He kissed my eyes.  
  
_“Don’t cry, Nerys…I want you too…”_  
  
He kissed my lips.  
  


  
  
Garak.  
  
_It was fucking Garak._ Garak was Eros. Garak was Eros and he’d shot him, he’d shot him today!  
  
I remembered now. I still had the memory – it had been patchy but most of it was coming back.   
  
When I’d been so angry in Ops, with everyone so coldly professional, analyzing problems, weighing options – forgetting Justin’s absence and accepting Dukat’s presence – while I’d gone into my head imagining ways to physically hurt him, he and Garak had gotten into a verbal altercation.   
  
Dukat had sneered at him. _“TAILOR!”,_ he’d spat with contempt. He’d said he should have had him executed, and Garak had retorted, _“you tried that, remember?”_  
  
But why…why had he said that…about executing him…why?  
  
_Because of Kira._  
  
Garak had been fed up with the abuse, angry. He’d said Kira would _never_ go for Dukat, _never_ be impressed with him, with his _"incessant posturing"_. How had he put it – she had better taste – yes – “ _she has much better taste than to be attracted to you_!”   
  
Garak had _shot him_ with those words, in front of Kira, in front of everyone.   
  
It’s not that Garak had _made_ him want her. I remembered Dax smirking up at the commander’s office where he’d gone to talk alone with Kira – Dax had known. He’d already wanted her, but when Garak shot him it made him _fucking crazy_ about it. He must have felt so angry and frustrated – even hurt – he must have wanted to chase her but known he couldn’t.   
  
_His soul must have been itching._  
  
And she – she had visibly _recoiled_ at the idea, I remembered. Her face had said it all – _of course_ she didn’t feel the same way, _of course_ she didn't want him, she would _never_ have wanted him. But Garak’s words were the poisonous shot, the arrow of hate. She was disgusted, repulsed. She would rather die – _or anything_ – than be caught by him.  
  
_Kira was Daphne._ Garak had shot them both. And I’d been caught in the fallout. My body slam had been all the provocation he hadn't known he was waiting for. I'd pushed him and that's all it had taken – he'd just sort of snapped. I'd wanted to physically assault him. He'd wanted to catch Daphne and love her.  
  


  
  
My childhood fantasy about Apollo had lacked in detail - well - no, it had lacked in dimension. Only one detail had been important, crucial, _essential_ \- Apollo caught me and I fell, I always fell, always fell under him, always in the darkness, always in his arms. The precious needed dimension wasn’t there because only my desire knew what was missing, my desire had always known before I did, before I could fill in the blank. I’d only known he was loving me, but my desire - my desire had known he was _fucking_ loving me, _truly fucking loving me_.  
  
And now my body was learning his fucking love. He was holding me, holding me under him, in the darkness of him in his arms, wrapping me, kissing me, filling me, fucking me. It was everything my desire had known, what it had called out for from the beginning of ever. My legs had always wrapped him, always held him, but my desire had known - always understood that my legs encircled him to draw his deepest reaches into mine, to hold his love inside me completely. He loved me _inside_ me, my desire had known.  
  
He kissed me like this time _he_ knew he'd be ripped off of _me_ and it would break him, that my open and giving lips would slip away from his, that my warm wanting of him would shimmer and vanish, that the spell would be broken - at any moment, _at any moment -_ and my kisses be lost to him forever. He kissed me like he suspended each kiss, memorized each precious joining of our lips, storing their essence and form secure in his heart against future famine sure to return - to sustain him when he would once more starve for love, when he would need _reason to live._  
  
I was overcome with his embrace. I wanted him all. I wanted to wrap him and hold him, hold him close, hold him down.   
  
I rolled him over to rest on him, to rest on his darkness, to sink into the night, the warm loving night.   
  
But as I was sinking, I was also dying. I spoke truth to him with my lips - _I want you, I want you_ \- but I lied love to him with my body. He wasn’t with me. He was with Kira. My body lied to him as Kira, loving him, hurting him, hurting myself. I’d learned as a child to show feelings that weren’t true, and I’d learned as a child how much that would _hurt_. I’d done it to preserve myself, to stay safe from harm - but lies about love don't preserve, they only destroy. They hurt with a hurt that never heals. It hurts to lie, it hurts to be lied to, and it hurts to do the hurting. And I lied _now_ , lied about _who I was,_ lied about my very self _._ It was ending me, it would reduce me to nothing. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to hurt, I didn’t want to hurt _him_ , I didn’t want to die _._ I wanted to live, I wanted to have him and hold him, I wanted to fucking love him, as Agat.   
  
_as Agat, like Dukat_  
  
_Feel me, sweetheart, feel me - I want you, feel me._ My breasts were on his throat, calling for him, ravishing him. My hands were in his hair, holding his head. I looked, I didn’t see myself in his eyes yet. I brought a breast to his mouth, he took it, he sucked it. I brought my mouth to his neck ridge, _my fucking ridge,_ by his ear, I took it, I sucked it, I licked it. We breathed together, sighing together, rocking each other, holding, sucking, licking. I rode him, I stroked him, I took him, I swallowed him, I _came_ over him.   
  
I heard him moaning, moaning - I could feel it, I could taste it. He moaned, he pushed, he pushed me up so he could look in my eyes.  
  
_“Agat - Agat! - ”_ , he cried my name to me. _“Agat!”_  
  
He treasured my breasts in his hands, he held them, he sculpted them.   
  
I looked in his eyes. I was in them. He looked. _He saw me._  
  
“ – Agat – Agat – you’re beautiful – "  
  
_how many more ways would he kill me?_  
  
I pressed myself down to him again and kissed his little ridge - on his nose, _one_ \- under his nose, _two_. I took his lips, they were mine now, for Agat, and I kissed him to keep him. I rode him and loved him until he took me by the ribs and rolled me under him again. I could read the purpose, the heat, in his eyes. I could feel him coming, coming to claim me, cresting the hill. He kissed me deeply, loving my lips, loving my mouth. He buried his face next to mine, his breath on my neck, his hair on my cheek, his cheek on my ear, _oh god and he came and he claimed_ , he claimed me so deep, so deep and so hard, he took and he claimed and he filled, he poured himself in, he shook and he fell and I caught him, I held him, I held him to _me_ , to Agat.   
  
He wrapped his arms around me, he embraced me, he loved me, he had me, he held me.   
  
_I just let him fucking hold me._  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _the childhood fantasy of being caught and loved/fucked by Apollo is all mine - I always wanted to rewrite the ending - why should she become a tree - so tragic - it's Apollo - get loved, Daphne - get fucked honey! and it's true I didn't know sex was a thing_  
> 
> 
> _but the insight about Apollo's selfish 'love' comes from this blog post I found:_  
> [The Psychology in Mythology: Apollo and Daphne](https://philosophicaltherapist.com/2017/04/27/the-psychology-in-mythology-apollo-and-daphne/)


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